Charlestown, Rhode Island: Narragansett Country

Charlestown, Rhode Island was separated from Westerly in seventeen thirty-eight and named for King Charles the Second, who had granted Rhode Island its original colonial charter. But the land here was occupied long before any English king entered the picture. This was the southern homeland of the Niantic people, closely allied with the larger Narragansett nation, whose sachem Ninigret led them through the turbulent decades of King Philip's War and the dispossessions that followed.

A large parcel here is still designated the Narragansett Settlement Land. The town remains one of the most rural on the Rhode Island coast, a patchwork of salt ponds, barrier beaches, and kettle ponds shaped by the glaciers that retreated thousands of years ago. Charlestown has no city center to speak of, just the characteristic village clusters of a colonial Rhode Island town.

Route One passes through on its way between New London and Providence, threading a narrow corridor of native history, colonial grants, and beach communities that has resisted the development pressure visible on either side.