Officially recognized as a parish in 1726, Wilton today is a residential community with open lands, historic architecture such as the Round House, and many colonial homes.

The first written records of the areas that are now Wilton date back to 1640, when Roger Ludlow and his friends purchased land from the Indians between the Norwalk and Saugatuck Rivers and "a day's walk into the country."

By the end of the 17th century, the Norwalk Proprietors began to sell off the northern lands for settlement.

In order to till the lands, the settlers had to clear the forests and remove hundreds of glacial rocks, which became the stone boundary walls that are treasured today.

The families who bought land in Wilton did not have their own church and were required to attend service in Norwalk each Sunday.

By 1725 there were forty families living in Wilton who wanted their own Congregational church and were allowed by Norwalk to hire a minister (Robert Sturgeon, who also became the town's first schoolmaster), open schools and build roads.

(See also: Benjamin Hickox) The Wilton Parish, organized as an ecclesiastical society, dealt with many problems of a secular nature as well.

It dealt with such things as communal flocks, pounds for animals, and the regulation of the trades and taverns.

The state of the roads was a constant source of comment in the society meeting, as was the inevitable subject of taxation.

Although the village parish did not have the right to send a representative to the state legislature, it did have complete charge of both local education and military training.

Among them was an African American named Cato Treadwell (1762–1849), who served three years in the 2nd Brigade of the Connecticut Line.

[11] Several homes were burned along Ridgefield, Belden, Danbury, and Dudley roads, but the town remained intact.

Farmers found their yield from the rocky soil to be very low at the same time that midwestern produce, made readily available by the railroads, began to compete with homegrown products, home industry expanded.

Mills of various types were built along the streams and the Gilbert and Bennett Manufacturing Co. began producing wire sieves in 1834.

The coming of the railroad in 1852 brought few advantages to a community of home industry and farming, but offered easy access to bountiful western lands.

After the Civil War, Wilton's population declined as cities grew, industrialization increased, the market for home products dropped, and farms were abandoned.

Beginning in the 1910s, abandoned farms were discovered by New Yorkers for summer homes and in the 1930s, there were noticeable stresses at Town Meetings between the "old-timers" and the "new people."

Shortly after World War II, a new phenomenon brought a new look to Wilton's landscape: the builder subdivision.

With the growth in population and businesses came the corresponding need for new schools, new roads, executive offices, and more support services.

Wilton was classified as a "dry" town until 1993, when the local ordinance was altered to permit the sale of alcoholic beverages in restaurants.

Wilton is bordered by Ridgefield to the northwest, Norwalk to the south, New Canaan to the southwest, Westport to the southeast, and Weston and Redding to the northeast.

[17]Between 1999 and 2005, the town's voters endorsed spending $23 million through municipal bonds to preserve land.

The southwestern corner of town includes part of the Silvermine neighborhood (which also extends into New Canaan and Norwalk).

In 2008, Wilton voted for Barack Obama, who became the first Democratic candidate for U.S. President to carry the town since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

In 2016, voters in Wilton delivered a 22-point margin of victory to Hillary Clinton, the best performance for a Democratic presidential nominee in the town since Johnson in 1964.

Since 2015, Wilton has been led by First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice, a Republican serving her second four-year term.