Southport Map
Southport is a section and census-designated place of the town of Fairfield, Connecticut, located along Long Island Sound between the Mill River and Sasco Brook (the Westport town line). As of the 2010 census it had a population of 1,585. Settled in 1639, the downtown area has been designated a local historic district since 1967 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 as the Southport Historic District. The historic significance of Southport is because of its harbor, churches, public buildings, and the homesteads of some of the first families in southwestern Connecticut.
The earliest recorded event in Southport's history was "The Great Swamp Fight" of July 1637 (not to be confused with the later Great Swamp Fight of King Philip's War), an episode of the Pequot War in which English colonial forces led by John Mason and Roger Ludlow vanquished a band of about 80 to 100 Pequot Indians who had earlier fled from their home territory in the Mystic area and had taken refuge with about 200 Sasqua Indians who inhabited the area that is now Fairfield. The exact location of the battle is not known, but it is known to have been in the vicinity of Southport.
In the eighteenth century, Mill River village, a part of Fairfield, was a small hamlet of a few houses and a wharf at the mouth of Fairfield's Mill River. Farm products from the surrounding area were shipped from Mill River's small harbor to ports in New York and beyond.
Nearby cities include Darien, Georgetown, Stamford, Ridgefield, Shelton.