Through the nineteenth century Westport became famous for a humble crop — it was a noted onion-farming center, an "Onion Capital" whose fields and the Saugatuck wharves shipped produce out along the Sound. The railroad and the mills came, and then, around 1910, something unexpected: artists. Westport became one of America's great arts colonies, home to the Famous Artists School and, from 1931, the Westport Country Playhouse in a converted 1835 tannery. By the mid-twentieth century it had become an affluent New York commuter town — but the Sound, the Saugatuck, and the Minute Man were still right where they had always been.
Westport's stories run from the shore to the easel. They'll tell you the town was once the Onion Capital, and that the Saugatuck once carried more shipping than you'd ever guess from its quiet drawbridge today. They'll tell you that around 1920 a young writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald rented a house on Compo Road South, and that the Sound-shore world he found here is bound up with the one he would later put into The Great Gatsby. And along the old Post Road, mid-century travelers knew Westport by a roadside landmark — the Clam Box, a seafood stop whose sign and silhouette are pure New England. Onions, artists, redcoats, and a writer on the shore: that's Westport.
Why People Visit Westport Connecticut
- Spend a day at Compo Beach, the town's Sound-front park, and find the Minute Man statue on the bluff above the 1777 landing site.
- Walk the Saugatuck River waterfront and the historic Saugatuck village, the colonial shipping center the town grew from.
- Catch a show at the Westport Country Playhouse, founded in 1931 in a converted 1835 tannery, or a summer concert at the Levitt Pavilion.
- Browse downtown Main Street and the river walk, with shops and galleries near the water.
- Visit Sherwood Island State Park, Connecticut's first state park, in the Greens Farms section of town.
- Read up at the Westport Library before exploring the town's deep arts-colony history.
