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Long before the resorts and the regattas, this was the country of the coastal Algonquian people of the Norwalk shore, who fished the coves and river mouths and gathered shellfish along the Sound — and who left the village its name: Rowayton, worn through spellings like Roaton and Rhoeton on the old deeds. The Five Mile River, the tidal inlet that still defines the place, carried their canoes before it carried anything else.
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.
