There is nothing like a roadside ice cream stand in summer to pull at the heartstrings of a true New Englander. The mere sight of the Hill-Top Creamery sign on the Post Road as I enter another commercial stretch of US Route 1 near the East Greenwich/ North Kingstown line is sufficient to induce me to delay my entry into North Kingstown for a few moments in order to fortify myself for the upcoming segment of my journey. The place is crowded with people on this very hot afternoon. School has recently started, and packs of kids have been brought by their parents to engage in a last ritual of summer before the school year truly gets going. A couple on a Harley pull in for a quick ice cream break, sitting in their leather biking outfits under an umbrella at one of the picnic tables set up in the parking lot in an effort to cool off. An elderly couple in a Lincoln pull into the parking lot, the wife driving. The husband stays in the car while the wife waits in line at the window of the stand. She comes back a couple of minutes later with two tasting spoons for her husband, who I at first thought was just hot or lazy, but now realize is incapable of getting out of the car without some difficulty.  She goes back after he has made his selection, and they sit placidly eating their cups of ice cream in their car with the engine running and the AC on. An electrical repair man and his apprentice pull up in their truck, and the boss buys the kid an ice cream, a reward for a hard day’s work in the late summer heat.  The sign indicates that the Hill-Top Creamery shuts October 11, Columbus Day, as do most of the outposts of summer in New England. My walk will not only take me through four states, but through at least three seasons. I hope it does not extend to a fourth season, so it’s time to hit the road, quickly slurping away at my “small” cone of mint chocolate chip and strawberry as it rapidly melts while I meander down the hot sidewalk adjacent to this busy road.

*****

        North Kingstown begins inauspiciously at the junction of two busy roads, Post Road (US Route 1) and Frenchtown Road (Route 402). Frenchtown is mentioned in an almanac of 1697 as twenty miles from Mr. Turpin’s in Providence “near Roger Williams’ trading house, Narragansett.” (1) The name derives from a group of Huguenots who settled just south of East Greenwich in 1686. Their efforts were unsuccessful, not least owing to the harassment they received at the hands of the English settlers, and by 1711 most had left for greener pastures, but the name remains to this day.(2)  One Frenchman who stayed was a Dr. Ayrault, who was most likely the “french Doctor” who joined up with Knight and the post rider on their journey to Connecticut at Haven’s Tavern, slightly south of Frenchtown. Ayrault is known to have lived in East Greenwich until his death in 1711, and there is an Ayrault Road in the town.

        Frenchtown Road is a busy road as is Post Road, and it takes a little care and effort to get through the intersection. I am not helped by the fact that the sidewalk has disappeared and will not reappear until I reach the village of Wickford. The traffic is fairly heavy here, but there is enough space by the side of the road to be able to walk reasonably safely. There are bus stops at intervals along this road, so it is obvious that other people must walk along this same stretch of road to get to their jobs at the various fast food restaurants, pharmacies, and shoe stores that line the street for the next mile or so.  There is no indication where East Greenwich, Warwick, and North Kingstown begin or end. I deduce I enter North Kingstown just before Frenchtown Road based on two observations: first, the sidewalk ends abruptly as I mentioned, and secondly, I pass Town Line Liquors. At some point I am definitely in North Kingstown because I pass the Kingstown Plaza. I would prefer a sign that says “Welcome to North Kingstown,” but as I said in the previous post, people in this area tend to identify with their village rather than the town, and apparently that extends to signage because I definitely see “welcome” signs when I get to villages.

        Speaking of villages, I pass through an area called Quidnesset, then another area called Davisville. After two miles of walking in a busy commercial thoroughfare I reach an interesting area, although the traffic is even busier here. The neighborhood of Davisville has within it a deactivated  Navy base called Naval Air Station Quonset Point, located on a peninsula of the same name.  The busy three-way intersection of Post Road, the old Quonset Road (now called Roger Williams Way), and Davisville Road is the site of much new residential and commercial development, as is the entire property of the former Naval base, which explains the heavy traffic.  The road passes over a railroad line which was built by the Navy to facilitate the transport of goods to the base. They did a good job as they should have, because this was the home of the Seabees, a nickname for the Construction Battalions (CBs, get it?) who built and repaired bases, airstrips, and myriad other projects to facilitate the war effort. We often do not think about the fact that forward operations, especially in World War II, required a huge amount of construction.  As many as 325,000 men served as Seabees during the Second World War. One of the lasting legacies of their efforts are the famous Quonset huts, the curved buildings that were assembled quickly and were lightweight but sturdy, designed and built for shipment here at Quonset Point.

        One of the casualties of the construction of the railroad was a large chunk of the hill to the right of Post Road. This is known as Devil’s Foot Rock, a petrosomatoglyph, which means there was an impression that resembled a large foot in the rock, and many myths and legends have been promulgated to explain the “footprint.”  Williams and others describe the site as a holy area for the Narragansett Indians, presumably because they had their own version of an explanation for the image.  There is also supposed to be an Indian burial ground on the property. It is a refreshingly verdant swath of woods after the last few miles of development.

*****

       

         Roger Williams observed in his Key into the Language of America that “In the Nariganset Countrey (which is the chief people in the land) a man shall come to many Townes, some bigger, some lesser, it may be a dozen in 20 miles Travell.”(3)  Somewhere south of Devil’s Foot Rock is reputed to have been the seat of the dual sachems who ruled the Narragansett Indians, Miantonomi and Canonicus.  It was certainly a densely populated area, as Roger Williams attested. Interestingly, the Narragansett were less affected by the diseases that swept through other tribes in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and so Williams established a trading post at Cocumscussoc, about one and a half miles south of Devil’s Foot Rock and the road to Quonset Point.(4)  The walk along the road here is less than optimal. There are intermittently spaced commercial and residential areas, but there are no sidewalks at all, and the traffic at times is uncomfortably close to me as the shoulder often becomes quite narrow.               

        I found in the Wickford Public Library a report from 1989 entitled Archaeological Review and Phase I Archaeological Survey of the Reconstruction of the Post Road of North Kingstown, Rhode Island which was next to a 1993 Rhode Island Department of Transportation report about the same project, a proposal to improve the road by adding sidewalks. The 1993 report states about the stretch of road from Devil’s Foot Road to Wickford, “The absence of sidewalks and curbing presents a hazard to both pedestrians and motorists alike,” and further goes on to state that “the last major reconstruction of Post Road in this area occurred in the 1930s.”  Apparently the project was never completed because the road here is one of the worst sections I have walked thus far, and the only sidewalks I encountered are at the village of Wickford.

        The reports do however contain lots of interesting information about the historical structures along this stretch of the road. One structure that existed somewhere along this stretch of Post Road was Havens’ Tavern, although its exact location has been the source of much confusion. Sarah Knight devoted a page of her diary to her stay at  “mr. Havens.’”  Upon her arrival at the inn on Tuesday evening, October 3, 1704 after a very long journey from Attleboro, Massachusetts which involved a “hazzardos River crossing,”  she “was very civilly Received, and courteously entertained, in a clean comfortable House.”(5)  According to her diary, once she crossed the Pawtuxet River her rider “told mee we had neer 14 miles to Ride to the next Stage, where we were to Lodg.”(6)  Following her route on modern-day roads, fourteen miles from the Pawtuxet Bridge brings me to a spot about midway between Devil’s Foot Rock and the site of Roger Williams’ Trading Post. Wilkins Updike, in his 1847 book The History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, states that “Havens’ tavern...stood on the site of the present residence of William P. Maxwell, near the “Devil’s Foot” Rock in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.” (7) The Post Road report mentioned above concurs that “the traditional view is that the Maxwell House is on the site of Havens’ Tavern.”(8) The report places the Maxwell House at 7315 Post Road, about a half mile south of Devil’s Rock, and within a quarter mile of the spot I marked off as fourteen miles. The building still exists, albeit today the much modified house serves as the Pagoda Inn, a Chinese restaurant, rather than as a tavern.

    Thomas Bicknell, in his magisterial four volume tome on the history of Rhode Island confidently proclaims to the contrary that the “Havens’-Spinks Tavern” stood a half mile SOUTH of Williams’ trading post(9), while an 1831 map shows Spinks Tavern at the intersection of Devil’s Foot Road and Post Road, slightly NORTH of Devil’s Rock, about the spot where the road to Quonset Point is today. Finally, my guide on this journey, Thomas Prince’s 1832 almanac, lists Haven’s in North Kingstown, 16 miles from Arnold’s in Pawtuxet, which would place it closer to Bicknell’s location. The only firm conclusion I draw from all this information is that the location of Havens’ Tavern is known to be somewhere between Quonset Road and Wickford.

*****

       

       

        The location of Roger Williams’ trading post, unlike Havens’ Tavern, is certain as the photo above illustrates. By 1651, Williams’ fledgling colony was still without a charter from the English government so Williams, to finance a trip to England to try and secure the rights to Providence Plantations, sold the post to fellow trader Richard Smith. Smith’s son, Richard Smith, Jr., was the owner of the trading post in 1676 when the Narragansett burned every English structure from Providence south, perhaps in retaliation for the massacre at the Great Swamp in 1675 (which will be discussed in a future entry) since the colonial troops massed at the Smith house, which even then was called Smith’s Castle (for reasons unknown) prior to heading south. Smith built a new home in 1678 on the site of the ruins, which remains, with much subsequent modification, today.(10) The Smith and Updike families (the Updikes married into the Smith family) ran the property as a “Plantation,” about which I will say more in the next entry, and it maintained its function as a farm until the early twentieth century.  John Winthrop, Jr., in the diary of his journey in 1645, stopped at the post, which he called “Cacosqusset,” on his way back to Boston.(11)

       There are, as I have described, many commercial establishments along Post Road, including a great place called Updike’s Newtowne Coffee Roasting Company, near Smith’s Castle where I have a fantastic cafe latte made by a friendly young woman who is a student at the nearby University of Rhode Island. Today, however, the main trading places are the small shops that line the picture-perfect streets of Wickford, a village just south of Smith’s Castle, the commercial center of which is about a half mile east of Post Road, surrounding  the lovely Wickford harbor.  I stop for a stroll through the streets, a visit to the library, and a lobster roll that I eat at a table with a view of the harbor. It’s too bad this town has only a tangential connection to the Post Road. The town was established by a grandson of Richard Smith’s, Lodowick (Wick, get it?) Updike as a speculative development in 1709, which was called Updike’s Newtowne. The town however failed to thrive until the late eighteenth century, when it became an important port and the major town in the area. Like all the small port towns in Narragansett Bay, a combination of factors relating to industrial development at Providence doomed any ambition the town may have had to be a major port, so Wickford settled into a second career as a tourist haven, which it remains today.

        At the intersection of Post Road and Main Street (which leads into Wickford and is also Route 1A),  Post Road becomes Tower Hill Road. This road is a two-lane road and is quieter than the four-lane road I have followed thus far as much of the traffic has turned onto Main Street, and for a couple of miles I enjoy a more peaceful, scenic walk in a pleasantly rural area. Fortune smiles upon me again as I encounter a major crossroads of highways, Route 1, Route 4, and Route 138. This menacing intersection results in a merger of all three routes and is a four-lane divided highway with a great deal of traffic. My research of old maps indicates fortunately that a road that veers right across the highway, called Pendar Road, is the route of the original Post Road. I cross the busy highway, and this road is even more tranquil and peaceful than Tower Hill Road has been. Pendar Road slowly winds around a lake and heads uphill. At the top of the long incline Pendar Road ends at Shermantown Road, on which I turn left and head toward Route 1 again. The ground here is level, although it is 170 feet higher than the road near Wickford, which might explain why this very quiet area, which was once an important crossroads, is sometimes referred to as the Platform. An Episcopal church was built here in 1707, making it the oldest Episcopal church in the Northeast. One minister, James McSparran, served from 1721 for over thirty-seven years both as minister to the English settlers and as a missionary to the remaining Narragansett Indians.(12) By the early nineteenth century time had passed the area by, and the Old Narragansett Church was moved in its entirety to the growing village of Wickford, cementing its status as the major center of North Kingstown.

*****

        Shermantown Road intersects the highway, and I am obliged to walk the last two miles on Route 1/138/ Tower Hill Road. Across the highway Shermantown Road becomes Gilbert Stuart Road, named for the painter of perhaps the most well-known portrait in the world, who was born in the house that still exists a mile down the road and baptized in Old Narragansett Church in 1756. Stuart’s 1796 unfinished portrait of George Washington was used as the iconic image found on the dollar bill.  I turn right however and journey alongside the traffic on the busy highway uphill until I reach the top, an area called McSparran Hill, about 240 feet above sea level. The views over the verdant countryside and across Narragansett Bay to Jamestown and beyond to Newport are magnificent. At the intersection of Bridgetown Road and Tower Hill Road I end my walk with an iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts, a shower at my hotel, and a mediocre dish of veal marsala at the Italian restaurant attached to the hotel. Tomorrow, I meet up with my fellow travelers Alexander Hamilton and James Birket, and together, all of us head west across southern Rhode Island.  Again my feet are sore, but as I gaze out at the view from the top of the Hannah Robinson Tower on McSparran Hill, I would not trade places with any of the thousands of drivers who passed me on the road today.