The Cliff Walk: Public Right of Way Through Private Splendor

On the eastern edge of Newport, a path runs for three and a half miles along the top of the cliffs where the Atlantic Ocean meets the shore. The Cliff Walk has existed in some form since the town's early days, when local fishermen used it to reach the rocky coast. For most of the Gilded Age, the owners of the great mansions along Bellevue tried to restrict access, arguing that the path crossed their private property.

The public right to the shore traces to the colonial charter and was later guaranteed in the Rhode Island constitution. The Cliff Walk is a public right of way, open to anyone, and it is today a National Recreation Trail, the first in New England. Walking its length puts the Atlantic Ocean on your right and the backs of the Gilded Age mansions on your left, from The Breakers through Marble House and Rosecliff, past Rough Point, all the way to where the cliffs give way to ordinary neighborhood streets.

The path varies considerably in condition. The northern sections near The Breakers are paved and wide and easy to walk on a summer morning. The southern sections are rougher, scrambling over rocks where the formal path has eroded and in a few places the spray of a good swell reaches the walkers on the cliffside.

The Cliff Walk lets you see what the Gilded Age looked like from the outside, from the vantage point of the ocean that the mansions were also built to face. The great stone houses were designed to be impressive from all directions, and this is the best angle from which to understand the scale and ambition of what was built here.