Old Saybrook Monument Fort

A place
that has
been special
for a very
long time
Way, way back in 1614 a Dutch fellow named Adrian Block sailed by this spot on his little 42 foot ship called Onrust. That’s old Dutch for restless and Adrian certain was. The Dutch claimed the area but in 1635 an Englishman with the cool name of Lion Gardiner and 12 of his buddies built a fort of this spot and the English been here ever since.
Unfortunately the original fort is long gone. Throughout the centuries it has caught fire, attacked by the Pequots and endured other traumas. Finally a railroad turnhouse was built here in 1871 and that, as well as some later projects destroyed the last reminisce of the fort. A marker of some sort has always remained but recent archaeological digs were unable to even find a single artifact. All gone.
It’s now a park and still a pretty cool place to visit. Free and open all year long the park is only about twenty acres but has lots of plaques explaining the history of Old Saybrook. I discovered that Yale University was first started near this spot and only moved to it’s present location in New Haven in 1716. The park even has a cool statue of Lion Gardiner himself.
Part of the area contains the remains of the old railroad turnhouse and there is a little boardwalk allows a short stroll into the marsh. Nice views of the huge mouth of the Connecticut River as well as two lighthouses can be seen and it’s still easy to understand why this was the spot chosen for the for the first settlement and why Adrian Block decided to take his ship Restless up the river those many centuries ago.
A place
that has
been special
for a very
long time