The Revolution reached this shore in earnest in July 1779, when a British force under Governor Tryon landed on the Norwalk coast and burned the town — one of the war's harshest blows to Connecticut. The Five Mile River hamlet shared its parent town's ordeal and its Patriot cause: Norwalk's militia turned out to meet the raid, and the little shore settlement rebuilt with the rest. Rowayton's Revolutionary connection runs with the eleven towns of our Minutemen of Connecticut history, and the village wears the winter version in the Minuteman Holiday collection.
European settlement came by way of Norwalk, founded in 1651, and the western shore where the Five Mile River met the Sound became a village of rocky farms and small wharves. For two hundred years it was known simply as Five Mile River — a working hamlet of shipwrights and oystermen, with a shipyard at what is now Pinkney Park and, by 1848, a hotel for the summer boarders who had begun to find the shore. The streetcar arrived in 1890, stitching the hamlet to South Norwalk and opening the summer trade wide.
Why People Visit Rowayton
Rowayton offers the Connecticut shore at its most relaxed and characterful — sailing, art, and quiet beaches in a village that has kept its scale and its salt-water soul. Visitors come for the harbor and the shore parks and stay for the unhurried, distilled village that Norwalk keeps at its edge.
