Prudence Island is the best-kept secret in Rhode Island
There’s a secret world waiting for you to explore right here in Newport County. Visiting it will cost you less than you’d pay for a pizza and delivers a slice of low-key coastal New England life just a half-hour ferry ride from downtown Bristol.
Prudence Island is your destination, but as the old Rhode Island saying goes, “pack a lunch,” because the acres of charm in this 5½-square-mile island don’t include any restaurants (or hotels or shops, save a single store near the ferry landing that’s usually only open when the boat comes in).
“This is the best-kept secret in Rhode Island,” a resident confided to me as I hopped off the 7:30 a.m. ferry Herbert C. Bonner at the dock in Homestead, Prudence Island’s main (and for all practical purposes, only) town, located on the island’s east shore. The island is part of the town of Portsmouth, but barely; you can’t get there from anywhere on Aquidneck Island unless you have your own boat, and municipal services don’t extent too far beyond a one-man police force, a volunteer fire department and a transfer station.
The fact that not much exciting happens on Prudence Island is kind of the point — that’s the way the 200 or so year-round residents like it. The peace and quiet of island life (which rouses only gently from its perpetual slumber in the summer season) is what residents cherish most.
“Quiet. Casual. Personal. Intensely personal,” is how writer and editor Elaine Lembo describes life on the island. Her partner, ceramic artist Rick Martell, lives on-island year-round, throwing pots and selling his work through his gallery, Prudence Pottery, while Lembo splits her weeks between Prudence Island and her condo in Newport. (“Big island, little island,” she says.)
Lembo spends much of her Prudence Island time in the dirt, either at the community garden at Farnham Farm or tending her own plot at home. Other distractions include the island book club and taking part in the occasional craft fair with Martell.
13 miles of trails of 'wild beauty'
That’s not to suggest that there’s nothing to do on Prudence Island. Most — 85 percent — of the island is protected conservation land accessible by more than 13 miles of hiking trails. Quiet roads, both paved and unpaved, are ideal for pedaling if you have a mountain bike or crossover capable of handling some bumps, ruts and sandy patches.
“I have walked and biked many trails, and kayak and row my varnished dinghy Lizard as much as possible,” Lembo says. “This island is gorgeous, and I adore it in all its wild beauty.”
The island is surprisingly big — about seven miles from the tip of Providence Point in the north to the T Wharf at the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in the south. The ferry can accommodate cars, but you can get nearly anywhere via pedal power if you’re willing and able to put the work in — and that includes some hilly sections, especially toward the middle of the island where many of the trails are located.
1896 schoolhouse also serves as a trailhead
On a small island, things that would pass relatively unnoticed back home become notable attractions. The Prudence Island School, for example, is a charming, bell-topped school serving as the island’s education center for both elementary and middle school students. Built in 1896, Rhode Island’s last operating one-room school also serves as the trailhead for the Schoolhouse Trail, one of six broad, grassy hiking and biking trails that meander into the center of the island like spokes on a wheel, all meeting at the ruins of Baker Farm, a historic tenant farm that now is the hub of the island’s disc golf course.
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Several of the paths connect to the Division Wall Trail, which follows an ancient stone wall bisecting the island. It dates to the 17th century, when the Narragansett tribe sold Prudence Island to a pair of rather notable European colonists, Rhode Island founding father Roger Williams and Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop. The wall marks the boundary between their two halves of the island, terminating on the west shore at Pulpit Rock, where Williams once delivered a sermon to the Narragansetts. A section of sandy desert along the trail is a startling site — a product of erosion due to poor Colonial farming practices.
Pine barrens and hardwood forest
South of the school is the Estuarine Research Reserve, a former Navy ammunition storage facility turned 400-acre nature preserve with large sections of undisturbed pine barrens and hardwood forest alive with deer and raptors, including a pair of ospreys nesting alongside one of the island’s rare sandy beaches. The paved roads — leftovers from when the military pulled out in 1972 — remain in reasonably good shape, with some leading to graffiti-scrawled concrete bunkers and other crumbling buildings. The reserve includes a seasonal education center explaining its mission to study and preserve the Narragansett Bay watershed. (Notably, the reserve also has the island’s only public restrooms, along with a shady picnic area.)
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Remnants of the Revolutionary War
Visitors can make a pleasant loop ride around the island by traveling from Narragansett Avenue on the east shore to Bay Avenue on the west shore via Broadway. Views along this rolling route alternate between the sparkling waters of the bay and the magnificent homes built along its shores. A single road provides access to the far north end of the island, with a grassy path passing through the remnants of North End Farm, which peaked before the Revolutionary War and never fully recovered from raids by the British.
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Eventually you’ll emerge at Providence Point, which as promised rewards you with distant views of the state capital. Take a few minutes to enjoy the moment, which you’re likely to experience in complete solitude, before making your way back toward the ferry. If you’ve worked up a thirst or appetite, don’t fret: downtown Bristol awaits on the not-so-distant shore, with Aidan’s Pub ready to slake your thirst just across from the ferry terminal and the Bristol House of Pizza around the corner.