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Selfies at any one of these locales will keep your feed fresh.

The Pedestrian Bridge, Providence; Avenue Concept murals, Providence; the Towers, Narragansett; Newport Bridge, Newport and / or Jamestown; Fourth of July Parade Route, Bristol; Wicked Tulips Flower Farm, Exeter and Johnston; Lavender Waves Farm, South Kingstown; Cliff Walk, Newport; Bowen’ s Wharf, Newport; Beavertail Lighthouse, Jamestown; Southeast Lighthouse, Block Island; Mohegan Bluffs, Block Island; Westminster Street, Providence; Benefit Street, Providence; Bellevue Avenue, Newport; Fantastic Umbrella Factory Gardens, Charlestown; Scituate Reservoir Causeway, Scituate; Carl Erickson covered bridge, Burrillville.

Land area in square miles

COUNTIES

Municipalities

TOWNS

in

NARRAGANSETT BAY *

( over 50 islands within the state)

Length of shoreline in miles

AREA CODE

* does not include Mount Hope Bay or Block Island.

Rhode Island is pretty tiny, and the rest of the world won’ t let us forget it( not that we’ d want to!). Here are a few comparison highlights.

Icebergs: In fact, one twice our size broke off of Antarctica in 2020. Actual islands: The state is a tad smaller than Prince Edward Island in Canada. Passing and crashing asteroids: In 2014, an asteroid the size of Rhode Island briefly eclipsed one of the brightest stars in the sky, Regulus. Furthermore, the Chesapeake Bay impact crater— created about 35 million years ago— is about twice as big. The Grand Canyon: According to tour guides, this giant ditch beats out the state by roughly 700 square miles. Texas: The Ocean State could hypothetically comfortably fit inside the Lone Star State more than 200 times if it really wanted to. Jokes and insults: There’ s too many to list, but to give you an idea, a Red Sox fan might accuse an umpire of having a“ Rhode Islandsize strike zone” when a Yankees player is up to bat. ◆

RHODE ISLAND BY REGION

Blackstone Valley

Kent County

Washington County

Block Island

Providence County

Bristol County

Newport County

Pre-1600 The area we know today as Rhode Island is home to several Indigenous peoples, including the Narragansett, Wampanoag, Nipmuc and Pequot.

1614 Dutch Explorer Adriaen Block visits the area and dubs it“ Roodt Eylandt.”

1636 Exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his advocacy of religious tolerance and the separation of church and state, Roger Williams founds Providence on land granted to him by the Narragansett Tribe.

1638 Roger Williams founds America’ s first Baptist church in Providence; Anne Hutchinson is the first woman to help found a U. S. town( Portsmouth).

1643 – 1644 Providence, Portsmouth and Newport become“ Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay;” Aquidneck Island is renamed Rhode Island.

1663 With a royal charter, King Charles II grants Rhode Islanders the freedom of religion and the right to govern themselves.

1675 – 1678 Tensions between local Colonists and Native Americans lead to King Philip’ s War, a conflict in which thousands of Indigenous peoples were killed or captured.