It sounds like a good news/bad news joke.
A realtor tells a client, “I found the perfect house for you.”
(Beat)
“It’s on Pan Handle Lane!”
Of course, despite its down-at-the-heels name, the little street off Red Coat Road is just as desirable as most other Westport addresses.
In fact, on the market right now: a Pan Handle Lane home for $4.975 million.
6 Pan Handle Lane: 5 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, 7,435 square feet, on 2.51 acres.
But the unfortunate address highlights an interesting aspect of Westport life: our street names.
Where did “Pan Handle Lane” come from? Did no one say, “That might not be the best idea?”
For that matter, what about Red Coat Road? Those guys are the reason we fought an entire war of independence. And we reward them with a street?!
(To be fair, Blue Coat Lane lies a couple of miles away.)
Nearly 250 years after the Revolutionary War, Westport remembers Red Coats and Blue Coats.
One man who thinks a lot about Westport names is Alex Drexler. A 5-year resident, he still finds new names to wonder about.
What he knows, he passes on to his 2 children.
As they drive around town, they talk about the Sherwoods. Passing Minute Man Hill, he tells them about, well, the redcoats and bluecoats.
But he wants to learn more, about Westport history, and its street names.
Of course, they’re often intertwined.
For example, families in what was then colonial Fairfield divided land into narrow strips, from just north of the “Boston Post Road” all the way to Redding.
Every so often, “highways” crossed them.
You see where this is going, right?
Today, we know 2 of those streets as “Long Lots Road” and “Cross Highway.”
The oldest home in Westport is on Long Lots Road, near Fairfield.
Alex is not the only one who wants to know more about the origins of Westport’s street names.
Many other “06880” readers do too.
Who hasn’t wondered about Fermily Lane, Fresenius Road or Smicap Lane? Rumpenmile Avenue? Wynfromere Lane?
We know a bit about families like Gault, Lehn, Meeker and Parsell, all of whom have roads named in their honor. But we can always learn more about why they’re located where they are.
Who was Wright, Sturges, Bulkley, Gonczy, Hyde and the man who had a circle named for him, Dr. Gillette?
How about all those first-name street names: Barbara, Donald, Elaine, Jackie, James, Jennie, Loretta, Marc, Mary Jane, Scot Alan, Sue and Victoria?
It makes sense, given the Native Americans who lived here first, to have Pequot Trail and Arrowhead Lane. But Apache Trail and Hiawatha Lane? That tribe, and that leader, lived nowhere near here.
Hiawatha was a chief of the Onondaga tribe. He helped establish the Iroquois (Five Nations) Confederacy. They were primarily in what is now New York State, Ontario and Quebec — not Fairfield County.
So here is today’s question: What do you know about the names of Westport’s roads, streets, lanes, avenues, drives, circles and terraces?
We want histories, and back stories. Click “Comments” below, and/or email 06880blog@gmail.com. We’ll compile your submissions into an upcoming piece.
Here’s one, to start things off: Roosevelt and Quentin Roads — which connect to each other, and are accessible at different points off Compo Beach Road — were both named after Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son. Quentin Roosevelt was killed in his airplane over Normandy on Bastille Day, during World War I.
And — according to Woody Klein’s history of Westport — Teddy Roosevelt himself spent summers in Westport, as a boy.
Theodore Roosevelt and his son Quentin.
(Where else but “06880” can you learn such interesting, important and random stuff about our past — and our present? If you enjoy this hyper-local blog, please click here to support us. Thank you!)
