The Sherwoods farmed the salt meadows around today’s Sherwood Mill Pond and Compo Cove, where a tide-powered grist mill used a timber dam and sluice gates to harness the daily rise and fall of Long Island Sound. Grain from nearby farms was ground into flour and shipped out by boat, linking this little cove to markets in New York and beyond. Oyster beds, salt haying, and small craft landings made the pond a compact hub of Westport’s coastal economy.
In the 1800s, Henry Burr Sherwood modernized the Compo Tide Mill and patented tools that helped power the region’s onion boom. The famed Southport/Westport globe onions were grown in neat, wind-sheltered rows along Hillspoint and the west side of the pond. As milling waned, the barrier beach evolved into a tight knit seaside community. The neighborhood now forms a National Register Historic District, preserving the layered story of tidal industry, oyster and farm landscapes, and early 20th-century life.
