Essex, CT Shirts

Essex built ships before America was a country, and the village still carries itself like a captain's town: white houses shoulder to shoulder down Main Street, a steamboat dock at the foot of it, and masts showing between the chimneys. In 1814 the British rowed upriver and burned the fleet at anchor, a raid the town has never quite let go of and now marks with a parade. These days the traffic runs the other way: a vintage steam train puffs out of town along the valley, meets a riverboat at the landing, and hands its passengers the Connecticut River at walking speed. That pairing, locomotive and riverboat, is the heart of our Essex shirt, drawn in the clean lines of an old timetable poster. It is a design for the people who hear that whistle across the marsh and know exactly what it is. Local Essex businesses with shirts of their own join this page as they come aboard ShirtMap.