Our Westport logo carries the same emblem every Merlin Classics Connecticut town wears — an oyster above "Connecticut, Est. 1636," the colony's founding year, rendered in hand-printed black and white with a worn, vintage feel. The oyster is the shoreline state's mark, the through-line that ties Westport to every other Connecticut town we make. What makes this one Westport is everything around it: the landing at Compo, the Minute Man on the bluff, the Saugatuck running down to the Sound. On a tee or a cap it reads less like a souvenir and more like a small piece of the Connecticut coast — Est. 1636, worn plain.
Where the British came ashore — and the minutemen met them on the way back. On the morning of April 25, 1777, some eighteen hundred British troops landed on the Long Island Sound shore at Compo Beach and marched inland to burn the Continental supply depot at Danbury. On their retreat to the ships, the local militia caught them at the Battle of Compo Hill. More than a century later the town raised a Minute Man on the bluff above the beach to remember the men who stood there. That shore is the heart of Westport, Connecticut — a town that grew up around the Saugatuck River shipping village, became a noted onion-farming center, and then turned into one of America's great arts colonies.
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.
