Warwick Neck
Occasional Pieces About Warwick Neck, Past and Present

Warwick Neck was founded in 1642, when Samuel Gorton and his followers purchased approximately 100 square miles from Miantonomi, leader of the Narragansett, for 30 English pounds, or about $7100 today. The modern boundaries of this land run from Pawtuxet to the Warwick Neck Lighthouse and 20 miles inland to the Connecticut border, and includes the greater part of Warwick, West Warwick and Coventry.

Travel to and from the Neck in the 17th and 18th centuries was unsurprisingly time-consuming and arduous. In one respect, however, it might have been easier than today:  a ferry ran from the Neck to Prudence Island and then to Newport from about the 1740s to about 1780. In 1874, the Warwick Neck railroad station opened where the current Warwick Neck bus stop is located. The line connected Oakland Beach, Warwick Neck and Conimicut with Cranston and beyond, and after 1881 extended to Buttonwoods. The train was succeeded by electric trolley, which stopped running in 1935 with the expansion of travel by car.*    

* Historical sketches in Did You Know? draw extensively, and sometimes literally, from Warwick Neck: A Collection of Memories, ed. Bill Nixon (381pp., 2nd edition, 2006). The book is an unrivaled cornucopia of text and photos about Warwick Neck. To purchase the book, please write us at office@warwickneckri.com.   

Warwick Neck Lighthouse

There are 21 lighthouses in Rhode Island, 13 of them of active. Among the oldest is the Warwick Neck Lighthouse at the southern most end of Warwick Neck Avenue. The first structure on the site was built in 1827. A house was added two years later, and was enlarged to its present six rooms towards the end of the century. The 51 foot high cylindrical cast iron lighthouse that we see today was built in 1932 further inland. But seven years later it was moved even further back because of the damage done to the coast line by the hurricane of 1938.

The lighthouse’s fog horn sounds one second every 15 seconds, its green light signals every 4 seconds. In 1985, the operation of the lighthouse was automated. The coast guard officer occupying the Victorian keeper’s house on the property retired in 2012, and since then it has been vacant.

But the lighthouse grounds have not gone unused. Notable community activities at the lighthouses are the celebration of Veterans Day sponsored by the Warwick Neck Improvement Association and Easter Sunrise Service led by several Warwick churches..

Photo by Lynne Damiano.