GRAPHICS : GETTY IMAGES ; PHOTOGRAPHY ( PREVIOUS PAGE , TOP ): COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES / DALE FORNOFF ; ( THIS PAGE , TOP ): COURTESY OF THE AVENUE CONCEPT .

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

The Pedestrian Bridge , Providence ; Avenue Concept murals , Providence ; Mural Project , Westerly ; 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 .

1639 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 – 1677 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 .