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| (click on image to enlarge) Lower Wharf from Ye Yacht Yard Circa early 1970's. From Arthur Jennings Collection |
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Lower Wharf from YYY circa 1970's
View of the breakwater from YYY
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| (click on image to enlarge) View looking out at the breakwater from the rails at Ye Yacht Yard. Photo: W. A. Gough Fairfield, Conn Date uncertain. Photograph property and courtesy of Howard Burr Collection./Joe Rainis |
Howard Burr circa 1983
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| (click on image to enlarge) Howard Burr circa 1983. Property and courtesy of Howard Burr Collection/Joe Rainis |
Barbara Burr with SEA FOX at Town Dock
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| (click on image to enlarge) At the town dock in Southport off Whyte's Rock, Ye Yacht Yard. Barbara Burr seen here getting ready to dive to pull the props. Photographer and date unknown. Part one of three photos in series. Photo property and courtesy of Howard Burr Collection/Joe Rainis. |
RECYCLED LINES Back-To-School End-Of-Summer WAREHOUSE SALE Aug.27-30th
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Thousands of great pieces for boys, girls, women & men with special Warehouse Sale pricing! Sale Highlights: • Vineyard Vines, Lilly Pulitzer, Lululemon, Johnnie-O, Patagonia, J.Crew + lots more • Back-to-school favorites • Stock up on the next size for your kids • Great end-of-summer deals • New inventory coming out throughout the sale • Opening Day = Best Selection! • Patrick Drive • Fairfield And this is just the beginning! As Recycled Lines winds down there will be more seasonal inventory and offering new markdowns and Warehouse Sales throughout the fall. |
FLASHBACK 2008: Waterfront Pumpkin Patch At Pine Creek
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A pumpkin patch at Bowman's Way
Pine Creek on Friday October 10, 2008.
Monday, August 24, 2026
Pine Creek Beach Summer 1941
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| (click on image to enlarge) Pine Creek Beach in the summer of 1941, Surfside in the background, at the end of South Pine Creek Road. Photo property and courtesy of: Dave Peck Collection |
AUGUST 2013 FLASHBACK: At the shack at YYY on Tuesday morning
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| (click on image to enlarge) Inside the shack at YYY on Tuesday Howard Burr would have turned 113 this summer. |
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| (click on images to enlarge) Ye Yacht Yard on Tuesday morning. |
Southport Summer Trolley Car circa 1894
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Summer Trolley Car #61
Southport, Connecticut
Description: This picture is shown in Banks _This Is Fairfield_ (pictures ff page 208) with legend "Summer Trolley." The trolley car system came to Southport in 1894. This picture may have been taken in Southport at the trolley terminus, Pequot Ave and the foot of Rose Hill Rd. If it was, the house in the background left is believed the old Benjamin Sherwood house (built 1820's), rented by the Frank E Lane family.
Summer Trolley Car #61
Southport, Connecticut
Description: This picture is shown in Banks _This Is Fairfield_ (pictures ff page 208) with legend "Summer Trolley." The trolley car system came to Southport in 1894. This picture may have been taken in Southport at the trolley terminus, Pequot Ave and the foot of Rose Hill Rd. If it was, the house in the background left is believed the old Benjamin Sherwood house (built 1820's), rented by the Frank E Lane family.
Creator: V. Louise Higgins
Publisher: Pequot Library Association
Date: circa 1894
Format: Photograph
August 2013 Flashback: A perfect beach day at Pine Creek on Sunday
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| Lifeguards no longer are staffed at Pine Creek Beach for the rest of the summer. |
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| (click on images to enlarge) Pine Creek Beach shoreline on Sunday. |
FLASHBACK: Summer of 2015 in Southport
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| (right click on images to open in new window to enlarge) Summer in Southport. |
View From Southport Beach Pequot Avenue
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E. B. Sturges Nirvana 1890's
Greens Farms, Connecticut
B/w post card. Printed on front: "'Nirvana.' E. B. Sturges. Greens Farms, Conn." The estate shown was located on the shore point in Westport just over the Southport line of Sasco Creek, the first house on the water side of Beachside Avenue. In 1925 the 11-acre-plus estate was sold and in 1932 part of the acreage became the Richardson property. Chronicle July 1894: "Edward B. Sturges & family of Scranton are occupying their summer home here. E. N. Sipperly has taken a contract to drill an artesian well for E. B. Sturges.... The well is to be deep enough to furnish a large supply of water.... Hydrants are also to be placed in various places about the grounds...." Chronicle 12 Mar 1896: "J. W. Darling is building a small cottage for E. B. Sturges. The lower floor will be used as a laundry and drying room while the upstairs part will be fitted up as servants quarters." Chronicle 27 April 1896: "Work on the new house for E. B. Sturges is nearly completed."
Creator: V. Louise Higgins
Publisher: Pequot Library Association
Format: Photograph
REFERENCE URL: www.pequotlibrary.org
Southport Breakwater in the summer of 1941
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| (click on image to enlarge) Southport Breakwater in the summer of 1941. Notice the rows of moored boats where the sandbar is currently. Photo: Codge Bullard Archive |
Into the sand
Written by Barry Wallace
(Published in Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09)
The waters of Long Island Sound sparkled a deep sapphire blue. The sunlight spread across its surface and lit up the waves. Shadows shimmered, zig-zagged like a school of fish and disappeared into the edge of the water.
September was cleanup time at the beach, and the weather seemed to be doing the same -- scouring away the leftovers of summer and bringing in a cleaner, drier season. The beach was splashed with bright sunshine and swept clean with brisk freshening breezes.
We were raking again using the old wood-handled rakes with their broken and rusted metal tines. In the pecking order of our Irish-American family at the time we, the twins, "weren't worth much" when it came to work. Our older brother Kevin could already drive a nail straight and true and had the instincts of a born carpenter. He was paired with our Uncle Phil doing the more skilled jobs of fixing porches, mending screens, measuring and sawing.
Brian and I helped the women changing bedding, sweeping up sand, mopping floors, lugging junk and moving furniture. But even these things, especially the cleaning and scrubbing, were considered somewhat advanced for us. So we were handed the old rakes and told to clean the sand around the cottages, removing nails, broken glass and anything else that found its way into the sand during the summer season. The tenants spent most of their time in the front near the water. Things sometimes fell out of their pockets and bags into the netherworld of beach sand.
The yards were all sandy back in the 1950s. Only a few Pine Creekers (pronounced "Crickers") had planted lawns then, and these were considered by the rest of us to be unnecessary and pretentious.
Before the huge stone jetties were built by the town to protect the beach, the yards were fronted by simple wooden bulkheads that did little to hold back the flood-tides. If your cottage survived hurricane season, your front yard would be left with the smoothest, whitest beach sand in all of in Fairfield. Such fine grains could easily flow through an hourglass. As kids we enjoyed making hourglasses with our hands and watching the sands of time sift through our fingers.
For us raking sand wasn't just busy work. After you scraped the surface it was surprising how much could be found hidden in it. We discovered toy guns, nail clippers, keys, coffee cups, cigarette lighters, ladies' compacts and all kinds of silverware. The sand was a lot like the water. After you dropped something into its depths you might never be able to find it again. Just one careless move and it vanished before your eyes. The distraction of relaxation also played a part at the beach. People settling back into a snooze or a novel might realize only later that they had lost something in the sand.
My father was especially pleased when we turned up shards of glass. The green and brown pieces of broken soda and beer bottles were easy to find. The clear glass that you couldn't see in the sand could deeply slice your feet or hands. We wore thick gloves on this work detail. Rusty nails and screws popped up everywhere. So did weathered hammers, screw drivers and other items lost from the tool box. These were rescued and put back into service, never the quite the same but still useful for a while longer. Even if the items were completely rusted, my father would throw them into a box for possible later consideration. We were a thoroughly Catholic family, who took the idea of resurrection seriously.
Of course, being kids, what we really hoped for was buried treasure. We believed we would find diamonds or rubies that would make us rich. Each unearthed piece of costume jewelry was breathlessly brought to the adults for inspection. It was all worthless but we remained convinced that we had discovered the imperial crown jewels. The rings were probably from gumball machines or Cracker Jack boxes. I should have realized there were no dowagers renting our humble beach-side shacks. They were working people like us out for a couple of relaxing weeks in the summer at an affordable price. A little bit of heaven close to home.
Once we found a condom in the sand and showed it to my father. I naively thought it might be some kind of a balloon. After that incident I remember him saying we shouldn't pick up everything we found in the sand. There was a peculiar expression on his face that I couldn't read, but that look told me we had discovered something that couldn't be explained to us just then. Certainly none of our guests would ever engage in such behavior, but there was a steady stream of beach crashers moved by moonlight and cheap beer to romantic interludes in the sand. Sometimes at night soft sounds would emanate from the shoreline and into our open bedroom windows -- bird calls, bell buoys, muffled laughing and whispers. The beach was filled with magic, but that kind of magic was well beyond the understanding of two still innocent young boys.
Although we recognized our low status on the family totem pole, we knew our father wanted the job done and done right. He would come out and check every so often to make sure we were still raking and to tell us how important it was for us to stay with it. "You boys might think you get all the dirty little jobs, but they need to be done well, too. It's like that in a big Irish family. You can be forty before they think you're old enough to hammer a nail." He was referring to his aunts and uncles who were also at work at Pine Creek. Although he was our father, he was still a boy to them. I sensed that Dad was trying to tell us something about himself and the family that he deeply loved. He wanted us to know that we were one of them in ways we might not understand. The beach was our familial place where we worked together as a family and told family stories. It was where we sometimes awkwardly stepped on toes in the dance of the generations and the complex feelings that were our heritage and our curse. We knew we were loved even if they seemed to have little use for us; even if we were made to feel we were in the way; even if the words we spoke were never enough to express what needed to be said. I may have learned all I ever was to learn on those weekends long ago. Life is filled with repetitive hard work coupled with steady progress and understanding. If you learn anything at all, it is important not to blindly grasp at something you can't see -- like sharp glass and rusty nails. We can't always understand the people we love, and even their love can be hurtful in ways we can never imagine. Time is like an hourglass that runs out on all of us. The older you get the more quickly the sand slips through your fingers. Almost every face and voice I remember from the beach is gone now. All the aunts and uncles, all the beach characters, my remarkable grandmother, Mal, and the father I was never ready to say goodbye to. And you never do find any buried treasure.
So there we all are in the sand next to the sparkling sound under the wide blue skies of a September Saturday. We are working together in the brisk breeze that entwines our breath as it races across the flat expanses of the beach. We are touching each other's lives like the shadows jutting out from the cottages and spreading longer across the sand as the sun slips lower in the sky. What falls into the sand is irrevocably transformed or lost forever. And it is beautiful, piece by piece, because it is all a part of our lives. READ MORE FROM: http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.com
(click on image to enlarge)
From Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09
(Published in Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09)
The waters of Long Island Sound sparkled a deep sapphire blue. The sunlight spread across its surface and lit up the waves. Shadows shimmered, zig-zagged like a school of fish and disappeared into the edge of the water.
September was cleanup time at the beach, and the weather seemed to be doing the same -- scouring away the leftovers of summer and bringing in a cleaner, drier season. The beach was splashed with bright sunshine and swept clean with brisk freshening breezes.
We were raking again using the old wood-handled rakes with their broken and rusted metal tines. In the pecking order of our Irish-American family at the time we, the twins, "weren't worth much" when it came to work. Our older brother Kevin could already drive a nail straight and true and had the instincts of a born carpenter. He was paired with our Uncle Phil doing the more skilled jobs of fixing porches, mending screens, measuring and sawing.
Brian and I helped the women changing bedding, sweeping up sand, mopping floors, lugging junk and moving furniture. But even these things, especially the cleaning and scrubbing, were considered somewhat advanced for us. So we were handed the old rakes and told to clean the sand around the cottages, removing nails, broken glass and anything else that found its way into the sand during the summer season. The tenants spent most of their time in the front near the water. Things sometimes fell out of their pockets and bags into the netherworld of beach sand.
The yards were all sandy back in the 1950s. Only a few Pine Creekers (pronounced "Crickers") had planted lawns then, and these were considered by the rest of us to be unnecessary and pretentious.
Before the huge stone jetties were built by the town to protect the beach, the yards were fronted by simple wooden bulkheads that did little to hold back the flood-tides. If your cottage survived hurricane season, your front yard would be left with the smoothest, whitest beach sand in all of in Fairfield. Such fine grains could easily flow through an hourglass. As kids we enjoyed making hourglasses with our hands and watching the sands of time sift through our fingers.
For us raking sand wasn't just busy work. After you scraped the surface it was surprising how much could be found hidden in it. We discovered toy guns, nail clippers, keys, coffee cups, cigarette lighters, ladies' compacts and all kinds of silverware. The sand was a lot like the water. After you dropped something into its depths you might never be able to find it again. Just one careless move and it vanished before your eyes. The distraction of relaxation also played a part at the beach. People settling back into a snooze or a novel might realize only later that they had lost something in the sand.
My father was especially pleased when we turned up shards of glass. The green and brown pieces of broken soda and beer bottles were easy to find. The clear glass that you couldn't see in the sand could deeply slice your feet or hands. We wore thick gloves on this work detail. Rusty nails and screws popped up everywhere. So did weathered hammers, screw drivers and other items lost from the tool box. These were rescued and put back into service, never the quite the same but still useful for a while longer. Even if the items were completely rusted, my father would throw them into a box for possible later consideration. We were a thoroughly Catholic family, who took the idea of resurrection seriously.
Of course, being kids, what we really hoped for was buried treasure. We believed we would find diamonds or rubies that would make us rich. Each unearthed piece of costume jewelry was breathlessly brought to the adults for inspection. It was all worthless but we remained convinced that we had discovered the imperial crown jewels. The rings were probably from gumball machines or Cracker Jack boxes. I should have realized there were no dowagers renting our humble beach-side shacks. They were working people like us out for a couple of relaxing weeks in the summer at an affordable price. A little bit of heaven close to home.
Once we found a condom in the sand and showed it to my father. I naively thought it might be some kind of a balloon. After that incident I remember him saying we shouldn't pick up everything we found in the sand. There was a peculiar expression on his face that I couldn't read, but that look told me we had discovered something that couldn't be explained to us just then. Certainly none of our guests would ever engage in such behavior, but there was a steady stream of beach crashers moved by moonlight and cheap beer to romantic interludes in the sand. Sometimes at night soft sounds would emanate from the shoreline and into our open bedroom windows -- bird calls, bell buoys, muffled laughing and whispers. The beach was filled with magic, but that kind of magic was well beyond the understanding of two still innocent young boys.
Although we recognized our low status on the family totem pole, we knew our father wanted the job done and done right. He would come out and check every so often to make sure we were still raking and to tell us how important it was for us to stay with it. "You boys might think you get all the dirty little jobs, but they need to be done well, too. It's like that in a big Irish family. You can be forty before they think you're old enough to hammer a nail." He was referring to his aunts and uncles who were also at work at Pine Creek. Although he was our father, he was still a boy to them. I sensed that Dad was trying to tell us something about himself and the family that he deeply loved. He wanted us to know that we were one of them in ways we might not understand. The beach was our familial place where we worked together as a family and told family stories. It was where we sometimes awkwardly stepped on toes in the dance of the generations and the complex feelings that were our heritage and our curse. We knew we were loved even if they seemed to have little use for us; even if we were made to feel we were in the way; even if the words we spoke were never enough to express what needed to be said. I may have learned all I ever was to learn on those weekends long ago. Life is filled with repetitive hard work coupled with steady progress and understanding. If you learn anything at all, it is important not to blindly grasp at something you can't see -- like sharp glass and rusty nails. We can't always understand the people we love, and even their love can be hurtful in ways we can never imagine. Time is like an hourglass that runs out on all of us. The older you get the more quickly the sand slips through your fingers. Almost every face and voice I remember from the beach is gone now. All the aunts and uncles, all the beach characters, my remarkable grandmother, Mal, and the father I was never ready to say goodbye to. And you never do find any buried treasure.
So there we all are in the sand next to the sparkling sound under the wide blue skies of a September Saturday. We are working together in the brisk breeze that entwines our breath as it races across the flat expanses of the beach. We are touching each other's lives like the shadows jutting out from the cottages and spreading longer across the sand as the sun slips lower in the sky. What falls into the sand is irrevocably transformed or lost forever. And it is beautiful, piece by piece, because it is all a part of our lives. READ MORE FROM: http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.com
(click on image to enlarge)
From Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09
Hurricane Carol August 1954 at YYY
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| (click on image to enlarge) Hurricane Carol August 1954 at Ye Yacht Yard, Southport, CT Photographer unknown. Photo property and courtesy of Howard Burr Collection. With special thanks to Joe Rainis. |
Sasco Beach Club circa 1927
(click on image to enlarge)
View Sasco Beach Club & Water
Southport, Connecticut, 1927
Black and white postcard postmarked August 19, 1927. Scene near Sasco Beach.
McKenzie's point in the distance.
Monday, August 17, 2026
FLASHBACK: 2009 Opti Championship Regatta August 13-15 at PYC
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Some Optis arrive by tow on Thursday.
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At the 2009 Opti Championship Regatta hosted by Pequot Yacht Club on Friday morning. Over 155 junior sailors from 50 clubs are competing this weekend in the waters south of the Southport Harbor channel.
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An Opti racer heads out at Whyte's Rock, YYY.
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Flotillas heading out on Friday morning at YYY.
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FLASHBACK: Giant Pumpkins on Pine Creek in August 2010
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These giant pumpkins sit only a few feet from Pine Creek.
August 11, 2010
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Sasco Beach Club in 1927
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Sasco Beach Club
Rare postcard, Sasco Beach Club postmarked August 17, 1927. View from a private beach near Sasco Beach near the Southport Harbor inlet. McKenzie's Point in the distance.
FLASHBACK: August 9, 2010 PYC Laser/420 Regatta
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The fleet of 100+ boats heading out on Monday morning for the 2010 420, Laser/Laser Radial Championships.
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The Regatta 2-3 miles off shore Sasco Beach on Monday morning.
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