When Madame Knight traveled to Connecticut in October 1704 she was in a hurry as she had business interests in New Haven.  The fact that she was a woman traveling alone and was unfamiliar with the territory made it expedient to acquire a guide to accompany her. The postal riders in the seventeenth century, in addition to carrying the mail as speedily as possible, were often engaged by travelers as guides. Having missed the postal rider in Dedham, Knight caught up with him in Attleboro and proceeded on the most direct route to Connecticut, through Providence, crossing the Providence River and then following the Narragansett Trail south down the western shore of Narragansett Bay. Thus Knight bypassed Newport entirely.

        According to the Rhode Island historian Charles Chapin, the official route of the post road was changed on a number of occasions. The road traveled through Providence in Knight’s day, but by 1715 officially ran to Newport, then across Narragansett Bay. Chapin also indicates that “the post rider followed this route in 1743, but the mails must have, a little later, been diverted through Providence, for the post road is described as running through Greenwich and Tower Hill in the almanacs of 1765 to 1772. It was then returned to Newport and Conanicut, for in 1773 John Carter, the postmaster in Providence, complained  ‘that the mails from the westward by a late alteration in the Post route now cross five ferries between Narragansett and Providence, whereas by the old route there’s not so much as one ferry to cross.’ ”  (1)

    It is for this reason, as well as the fact that the authors of  two of the travelers’ diaries which are of greatest interest to me, those of Alexander Hamilton and James Birket, both journeyed through Newport, that I followed the road first to that city. Now I am back in Providence and am about to embark on a new stage of my journey. From where I am standing, at the foot of Weybosset Bridge, the post road heads down the western shore of Narragansett Bay to southern Rhode Island. From there the travelers from Newport meet up with the travelers on this road, and the two roads become one road which heads west to New York. There are no more diversions or detours or alternate routes to New York now, there is only The Post Road.

*****

         I am back in Providence.  I am standing in front of the Weybosset Bridge which crosses what was called the Great Salt River in the early seventeenth century but today is known as the Providence River. Across the river is modern Providence, the commercial and political center of Rhode Island, whose tall skyscrapers and grand public buildings reflect the economic dominance the city achieved over Newport during the course of the last two centuries. Crossing the bridge will bring me into the heart of downtown, and the Post Road, known as Weybosset Street as it winds between office buildings, continues on through the city as Broad Street into the less well-off neighborhoods to the south. From there the road continues, without diversions or detours, in a steady southerly direction until it reaches Southern Rhode Island, where the road Sarah Knight took meets the passengers from Newport, and then the road turns west and continues along Long Island Sound until it reaches New York.  Crossing this bridge is the beginning of a new phase of this project.

        The site of Weybosset Bridge has a long history as a crossing point over the Providence River. Weybosset means “crossing place” in Narragansett, and so it was that this was the site of the junction of three Indian trails, the trail to Pawtucket, the Wampanoag trail, and the Narragansett or Pequot Trail. By now the reader will have realized that there are certain recurrent themes as I travel along the old roads between Boston and New York. The most obvious one is that the colonists often adapted the same paths and crossing places that had been used by the Indians who already lived here. This site was the southernmost  fording spot for crossing to the other side of Narragansett Bay.

        Thus it was at this site that a bridge across the river was first constructed by the colonists in 1660 but fell into disrepair and collapsed by the 1670s. A new bridge was not constructed until 1711 (we will return to this date later in this entry).  According to the wayside in front of the bridge, this bridge was destroyed by a flood and was rebuilt in 1719. A fourth bridge was built in 1745, carried away by a gale in 1764 and replaced by a drawbridge. It too was destroyed as was a sixth and a seventh bridge. But the eighth bridge stayed up (this is getting seriously Pythonesque: “But the fourth one stayed up, and that’s what you’re getting lad, the STRONGEST castle in these parts...”). Subsequently the bridge was continually expanded until the “widest bridge in the World” extended 1147 feet over the river. By the 1980s it was mainly used as a parking lot, and the river was hidden from view. An ambitious reclamation project began in the late 1980s to restore the rivers that run through Providence, and this began a remarkable cultural revitalization of Downtown Providence probably best known these days for the WaterFire performances held throughout the summer.  The present footbridge over the river in front of me is one of the products of this ambitious project.

        The perspicacious reader will note that there was no bridge when Sarah Knight crossed the Providence River on October 3, 1704, which is most likely why she does not mention it. The other side of the river, originally called Weybosset Neck, was a marshy area bordering on Weybosset Hill. The trail would have skirted around the southern edge of the hill to avoid slogging through the marsh and  climbing over the hill, and so Weybosset Street today gracefully curves through downtown, even though the hill has been leveled and used to fill the marshy areas in the same manner as the Back Bay in Boston. As late as the early eighteenth century there was no settlement on the west side of the river, but slowly commercial interests began to build up on the west bank of the river, and by the 1760s maps of the area show two or three main streets on the west side of the river crisscrossed with half a dozen small streets. 

*****

        After the Revolution the position of Providence at the head of Narragansett Bay and at the mouth of three of the largest rivers in the state, all of which flowed into the bay, enabled the city to quickly become the economic and commercial center of Rhode Island. Goods produced in mills up river were transported to Providence for export, and goods imported by sea (and later rail) were distributed to the hinterlands. Banks and other financial institutions expanded their operations in the city, and the open land on the west side quickly was filled with commercial buildings. The population of Providence exploded with immigrants arriving to work in the factories that began to dominate the skyline. As William McLoughlin puts it “Roger Williams had chosen a better site than he could ever have guessed.” (2) The dominance of the “city-state” of Providence was reflected in the change in the population dynamics of Rhode Island: in 1790 the population of Rhode Island was 69,000, of which both Providence and Newport each held about 10 percent. By 1860, the population of the state had increased 150 percent to 175,000. The city of Providence held 50,000 of these people (about 30%), while the area around the head of Narragansett Bay, the “Metropolitan area” of Providence, held almost 80% of the population of the state. Newport, for 150 years the largest town in Rhode Island, had increased from 6900 to a mere 10,000 people. McLoughlin notes that “seaports like Newport, Bristol, Warren, Wickford, and Westerly faded into quaint backwater towns, while...Crowded, smoky cities in the northern half of the state became the center of enterprise, power, and prosperity...” (3).

*****

  

     To the modern reader, 50,000 people seems like a rather small population for a big city. However, most of these people were packed into an area of less than seven square miles, making Providence of 1860 almost as dense as Baltimore, Seattle, or Los Angeles is today. Even today, the commercial center of the second largest city in New England is remarkably small, somewhat less than one square mile from the State Capitol at the northern end to the southern and western edges demarcated by Interstate 95 and US 6. The Providence River separates Downtown from the Eastside, and as soon as I cross Weybosset Bridge the buildings change from charming colonial and nineteenth-century brownstones to towering modern office blocks, Art Deco Skyscrapers from the twenties and thirties, and ornate cast iron office buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hidden among the giants, only a few yards along Weybosset Street, is the Arcade, a beautiful indoor shopping mall from 1828 that is symbolic of the transformation of Weybosset Neck into the commercial center of Providence and Rhode Island. Unfortunately, it is also symbolic of the decline of modern Providence as it is currently closed.   

         Although it remains the second largest city in New England, Providence, like other cities in New England, has experienced tough economic times with the decline of the industrial base which powered the economies of the region for almost two centuries. The smooth facade of Waterplace Park and the wonderful architecture of the Eastside cannot mask the problems entirely.  This becomes abundantly clear to me as I leave Downtown Providence, crossing over Interstate 95 as Weybosset becomes Broad Street, and enter South Providence. The Upper South Providence Neighborhood is the poorest area in Providence, and I am immediately struck by the number of what appear to be homeless people hanging around a park across the street from a large facility called Crossroads. It turns out most of them ARE homeless as Crossroads is a facility that helps homeless people by providing substance abuse and mental health programs as well as job training and medical services. The population in this neighborhood is a polyglot mix of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian, primarily Vietnamese judging from the signs on the storefronts. The number of check cashing facilities, liquor stores, fast food restaurants, and stores accepting food stamps is as high as any place along the road I have traveled since Roxbury in Boston. It is hot today, over 90 degrees, and there are virtually no trees along the roadside to shade me as I walk. I start to have visions that I am in the movie Bladerunner.

        It stuns me that in this country it is so easy to go from an area of high income and prosperity, such as Benefit Street on the Eastside, to an area less than a mile away where it is obvious many people are not at all well off. As I walk along I notice that most of the buildings are actually quite solid and well-built, but that they have been neglected, or renovated cheaply, so that a Victorian house on the Eastside that might sell for a pretty penny is here covered with vinyl siding and has no yard because it has been paved over. I get a few stares, none overtly hostile but certainly curious, and I have one uncomfortable encounter with a group of kids who pass me on the sidewalk, deliberately trying to make me move into the street. I need a break and, as luck would have it, I see a sign for a place called the Friendship Cafe just ahead.

    Inside the cool, inviting cafe I sit with a coffee and a delicious pastry and marvel at the fact that a place this nice would be situated here in this down-at-the-heels neighborhood. I strike up a conversation with one of the employees, a friendly young woman named Stefanie, and she explains that the cafe is part of an organization dedicated to serving the poor and homeless called Amos House. This endeavor is associated with a culinary education program designed to give “at risk” individuals a chance to learn skills to help them find gainful employment. Graduates of the course, many of whom, like Stefanie, have had problems with the law, can work here to gain valuable experience that will help them to move into the working world more easily. Stefanie tells me she loves to cook and she wants to open up a food truck serving “Spanish” food. I find out she is twenty-six and that she has two children, the eldest twelve years old. Tears well up in her eyes when she tells me how much she loves the program she has gone through and the people who have helped her. She also tells me that in the last year or so she has noticed a huge spike in the number of people on the street in this area, which she refers to as “the ghetto,” many of whom have need of Amos House facilities and substance abuse centers. She attributes this upsurge to the faltering economy but is optimistic that she herself has managed to rise above her problems and make a new start. She has not been dealt a good hand so far in life and early on threw away what cards she had, but she seems determined to succeed and radiates positive energy. I wish her well.

        Fortified by the coffee and pastry, the air conditioning, and the bracing perspective on my surroundings provided by Stefanie, I head back out into the street to continue on my walk through South Providence. Suddenly things don’t seem quite so bleak. I look at the run-down commercial buildings and instead of bemoaning their sorry state, I marvel at the fact that they are virtually all occupied by businesses. Many of the signs here are in Spanish, the flags hanging on them are mostly Dominican and Puerto Rican, and instead of seeing a downtrodden faceless and powerless group of poor minorities I see people pulling themselves up and working to make themselves a better life. True I do see people hanging outside the liquor store drinking from paper bags, but I also see barbershops full of customers, auto body shops with cars freshly “pimped,” and little tiendas selling food instead of lottery tickets, although the stores selling lottery tickets are here as well. I see the poverty, I see the social problems exemplified by the strung out woman lying on the sidewalk whom I am forced to walk around, and I see the violence that this type of situation often engenders as two drunk guys start to go at it on a park bench, but now I see hope as well, as I also see people taking charge of their lives despite the disadvantages with which many of them are saddled.

*****

        After two miles walking down Broad Street I recross Interstate 95 and the scenery changes immediately. To my right is a large park, Roger Williams Park, which is a refreshing verdant swath through the south side of the city of Providence. I take a short detour to visit the zoo and rest a bit from the sun which is beating down pretty hard today. After an hour or so observing giraffes and anacondas I head back out onto Broad Street and cross the line into Cranston, Rhode Island.  The home of the fictitious Griffin Family (called Quahog on the show, Family Guy), Cranston was part of the original Providence Plantation until 1754, and included what is now South Providence. Later, South Providence broke away from Cranston and became part of Providence. Cranston is decidedly more well off than South Providence, with more typical middle class houses with manicured yards and a nice library which provides another opportunity to cool off as the temperature hits 95 degrees. After spending an hour researching and cooling off, I head back out and reach an area where the median strip is painted red, white, and blue as it was in Bristol. This area is known as the village of Pawtuxet, an old settlement that straddles the Pawtuxet River. I shall have more to say about the history of the village, including an explanation of the patriotic median strip in the next entry. Here it will suffice to say that the Pawtuxet River marked the boundary of the old Providence Plantation. The original treaty indicated that the borders of the plantation were to be from the Pawtucket River to the Pawtuxet River. (4) As I discussed in the entry on Pawtucket, the word “pawtuxet” or “pawtucket” means waterfalls, and there are indeed falls here at the mouth of this lovely river. A bridge was built here in 1711, complementing the bridges built at Providence and at Pawtucket at the same time by the colonial legislature, which appropriated a sum of 200 pounds to build the three bridges.

        I end my walk with yet another visit to a cafe to eat a late lunch and cool down, this time the “Little Falls Cafe” in  Pawtuxet village. I reflect that I have now crossed the entirety of the original Providence Plantation. Across the Pawtuxet River the street name changes from Broad Street to Old Post Road, a name the road essentially takes for the remainder of the walk to New York. Just over the bridge is a milestone from 1784 which reads “5 miles from Providence Bridge.” South of this milestone I enter what was called “Narragansett Country” in the old descriptions of the area. I am heading back into the “wilderness.”