A bucolic outpost

POMFRET, CONN.
DISTANCE FROM BOSTON: 70 miles
POPULATION: 3,798
WEBSITES: visitpomfret.com, pomfretct.com
ODD FACT: Actress Renee Zellweger has a home in Pomfret.

Pomfret may be best known for its picture-postcard private boarding schools, the Pomfret School, founded in 1894 on a lush, green 500-acre campus, and the Rectory School, founded in 1920. The schools provide some of the town's most distinctive architecture. A drive along Route 169, the main north-south thoroughfare and a designated national scenic byway, passes rolling meadows and miles of stone walls. Incorporated in 1713 on land purchased from the Owaneco Indians in 1686, Pomfret was named after Pontefrat, the English home in Yorkshire of the family of Governor Gurdon Saltonstall. The town boasts several buildings and sites on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Brayton Grist Mill, Abington Congregational Church, Wolf Den, and Old Town House. Though houses now cover much of what was once farmland, there are still about a dozen working farms, including dairy farms and orchards.