Today Westport is known for its beaches, its theater, and a shoreline elegance that has never lost its Revolutionary bones. Its story blends a colonial shipping village, the 1777 landing at Compo, an 1835 town, an onion-farming past, and an arts colony that drew the country's illustrators and players. Our Westport designs gather that identity into wearable form — Compo Beach, the Minute Man, the Saugatuck, the Sound. Explore the collection and carry a little of the Westport shore with you.
The war came to Westport by water. On the evening of April 25, 1777, some twenty-six British ships anchored off Compo Beach and landed about 1,850 troops under General William Tryon, who marched inland and burned the Continental supply depot at Danbury. The countryside rose behind them. On the return march the militia made the British pay, first at Ridgefield and then at the Battle of Compo Hill above the beach, where the redcoats finally cleared their way back to the ships with a bayonet charge. More than one hundred Continentals fell in the raid's engagements, among them General David Wooster, mortally wounded rallying his men.
Why People Visit Westport Connecticut
Westport draws people who love the shore, the arts, and a good story. It is a Revolutionary-War landing site with a Minute Man on the beach, a colonial shipping village turned arts colony, and a Long Island Sound shoreline of beaches, river, and marsh. Visitors come for the rare mix — history you can stand on at Compo, theater and music in the summer, and a refined New England coast an easy train ride from New York.
