History of Norwalk, Connecticut

The history of Norwalk, Connecticut ranges from pre-contact cultures and Native Americans to the 21st century.

During an era when Christopher Columbus had "discovered" the New World, Native Americans had unquestionably inhabited the area later recorded in history as Norwalk, Connecticut. Even before then many, but not all, such cultures of indigenous people came, dwelled, hunted wild animals for food, and left the area sporadically through time. Artifacts, discarded and left behind now identified by archaeologists as being consistent with cultures as far back as the earliest known peoples of North American. Known in modern time as the Paleoindian Period, sites consistent with these eras have been found in three areas of modern-day Norwalk, Connecticut. Some of these artifacts were used by hunter-gatherers roughly 5,000 B.P. to 10,200 BP.

According to an article published in Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society one such site, an ancient rock shelter presently named Bitter Rock, with undisturbed aboriginal material, was discovered, excavated and its artifacts cataloged. Today that site remains in an area of Norwalk, once known in contemporary history as Winnupuck Village on private property near to Ward Street (formerly Stickey Plain Road).

First occupied by Amerinds (Indigenous peoples of the Americas) about 3000 B.P. Artifacts such as projectile points found there indicate that the earliest residents of this site were primarily hunters. Later dwellers eventually added shellfish to their diet. After Long Island Sound moved inland, Spruce Swamp became infused with salt-water, and apparently, the site was abandoned at some time between 1000 B.C. and 1500 A.D. In the layers of the midden, two unique objects - a decorated paintstone[?],which may have depicted an astronomical phenomenon or have been a plan of the original village, and the skull of an adult male, bearing healed scars that seem to indicate a hole drilled, incised or scraped into the skull using simple surgical tools while the recipient remains alive... may provide important clues to the origins of these people." Now only a small half-acre salt water pond located at the southwest corner of Taylor Farm park remains as Spruce swamp had been almost 7 acres until it was destroyed "...by the construction of Calf Pasture Drive in the 1930s through the middle of the swamp and the subsequent dredging of the western portion in 1958 to create a boat basin." Despite the destruction it remains a documented archaeological site with artifacts left behind such as arrow points, pottery and bone fragments by a succession of cultures.

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