More From Redding Connecticut
-
Redding Connecticut Cotton Jersey Baby Bodysuit - Black Logo
Regular price $26.00 USDRegular priceSale price $26.00 USD -
Redding Connecticut Vintage Retro Kiss-Cut Vinyl Sticker - Black Logo
Regular price From $6.00 USDRegular priceSale price From $6.00 USD -
Redding Connecticut Vintage Retro Minuteman Holiday Cotton Tee - White Logo
Regular price $36.00 USDRegular priceSale price $36.00 USD -
Redding Connecticut Vintage Retro Ceramic Mug - Black Logo
Regular price From $18.00 USDRegular priceSale price From $18.00 USD
The town began as a gap on the map. The country between Fairfield and Danbury was common land when John Read, a Fairfield-born lawyer, settled a tract he called Lonetown; his deed from the sachem Chickens is dated 1714. Farms and mills gathered around it, the settlement became a parish of Fairfield in 1729, and in 1767 it was incorporated as a town of fewer than a thousand people and named for Read. The spelling settled into Redding, the way it had always been said.
Why is Redding called Connecticut's Valley Forge? Because in the winter of 1778–79 Major General Israel Putnam quartered a division of the Continental Army here — about three thousand men in three camps of log huts — short of bread, blankets and shoes. Joseph Plumb Martin, a Connecticut private who wintered in Redding, remembered the season as one of starving and freezing. The main camp is now Putnam Memorial State Park.
Why People Visit Redding
People come to Redding for what is not here: no highway, no strip, no crowd. They come for a Revolutionary War camp you can walk alone on a winter morning, for sixty miles of trails, and for the hills that drew Mark Twain, Charles Ives and Edward Steichen out of New York.
