Mill Hill: Norwalk's Colonial Core
Near Bridgeport Stamford, Connecticut
Mill Hill is where Norwalk began. English settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the town in sixteen fifty-one on this rise above the Norwalk River, drawn by the mill site and sheltered harbor. The hill served as Norwalk's civic and commercial center for more than a century, until British forces burned most of the town in July seventeen seventy-nine during a punishing raid on Fairfield County.
The colonists rebuilt, but the commercial center eventually migrated downhill. What survived on Mill Hill is a small burying ground opened in seventeen sixty-seven and holding Revolutionary War veterans, alongside a colonial-era house moved to the site. The park today preserves those remnants and offers the best elevated view of the Norwalk River watershed.
The same view the town's founders chose when they decided this was the place.
