page_title: New Canaan, Connecticut
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: New Canaan, Connecticut / History
caption_attribution_description: English: New Canaan Railroad Station, looking southwest down the tracks.
context_page_description: New Canaan is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 19,738 according to the 2010 census.
  About an hour's train ride from Manhattan, the town is considered part of Connecticut's Gold Coast. The town is bounded on the south by Darien, on west by Stamford, on the east by Wilton, on the southeast by Norwalk, and on the north by Lewisboro and Pound Ridge in Westchester County, New York.
  New Canaan is known for its wide range of architecture and vast public parks such as Waveny Park, and a signature town center with classic boutiques. Residents carol on God’s Acre every Christmas Eve, a town tradition since 1916. It is also known for its public school system, which in 2018 was ranked as the top public school system in Connecticut, and in 2008 the third-best in the country.
context_section_description: In 1731, Connecticut's colonial legislature established Canaan Parish as a religious entity in northwestern Norwalk and northeastern Stamford. The right to form a Congregational church was granted to the few families scattered through the area. As inhabitants of Norwalk or Stamford, Canaan Parish settlers still had to vote, pay taxes, serve on juries, and file deeds in their home towns. Because Canaan Parish was not planned as a town when it was first settled in 1731, when New Canaan was incorporated in 1801, it found itself without a central common, a main street, or a town hall.
  Until the Revolutionary War, New Canaan was primarily an agricultural community; after the war, its major industry was shoemaking. As New Canaan's shoe business gathered momentum early in the 19th century, instead of a central village, regional settlements of clustered houses, mill, and school developed into distinct district centers. Some of the districts were centered on Ponus Ridge, West Road, Oenoke Ridge, Smith Ridge, Talmadge Hill, and Silvermine, a pattern that the village gradually outgrew.
  With the 1868 advent of the railroad to New Canaan, many of New York City's wealthy residents discovered the  pastoral beauty of the area and built summer homes. Eventually, many of the summer visitors settled year-round, commuting to their jobs in New York City and creating the understated ambiance that continues to characterize the community today.
  Lewis Lapham, a founder of Texaco and great-grandfather of long-time Harper's Magazine editor Lewis H. Lapham, spent summers with his family at their estate that is now 300-acre (1.2 km²) Waveny Park next to Talmadge Hill and the Merritt Parkway.
  In the 1890s, editor Will Kirk of the Messenger wrote an editorial in response to area editors who chided him, saying New Canaan was the "next station to hell." An alleged remark by a parched Civil War veteran marching in the Decoration Day Parade on an unusually hot day prompted the exchange. The remark was found untrue and Kirk, after enduring the comments of others, wrote about a "dream" of approaching the Pearly Gates in the company of his fellow editors. All others were turned away, but he, Will Kirk, was welcomed, because he, in fact, was from the "Next Station to Heaven." Since then, the name has been controversial, with residents affectionately using the latter, and local critics of New Canaan still using the original nickname.
caption: New Canaan Train Station
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