Napatree Point in

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...

, often referred to simply as Napatree, is a long sandy spit created by a geologic process called longshore drift. Up until the

Hurricane of 1938 The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express Hurricane) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike Long Island, New York, and New England. The stor ...

, Napatree was sickle-shaped and included a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) long northern extension called Sandy Point. Napatree now extends 1.5 miles (2.4 km) westward from the business district of Watch Hill, a village in

Westerly, Rhode Island Westerly is a town on the southwestern shoreline of Washington County, Rhode Island, first settled by English colonists in 1661 and incorporated as a municipality in 1669. It is a beachfront community on the south shore of the state with a popula ...

forming a protected harbor. It is the southernmost and westernmost point of mainland Rhode Island.

Name origin

Reportedly, the name "Napatree" derives from Nap or Nape (Neck) of Trees. Napatree Point was once heavily wooded. However, when the

Great September Gale of 1815 The Great September Gale of 1815 (the word "hurricane" was not yet current in American English) is one of five "major hurricanes" (Category 3 on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale) to strike New England since 1635. At the time it struck, t ...

struck the area, the trees were destroyed."Watch Hill In The Hurricane of September 21st, 1938" a special pictorial issue of Seaside Topics published November 1938.

Geography and geology

Napatree Point is a slender, 1.5 mile long peninsula in

Block Island Sound Block Island Sound is a strait in the open Atlantic Ocean, approximately wide, separating Block Island from the coast of mainland Rhode Island. On the west, it extends to Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island, as well as Plum Isl ...

. To the north of the peninsula is Little Narragansett Bay, a small

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...

into which the

Pawcatuck River The Pawcatuck River is a river in the US states of Rhode Island and Connecticut flowing approximately .U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 There are eight dam ...

empties. The small bay is an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The peninsula is partially made from longshore drift. It is also made from

glacial moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice shee ...

, and is similar in makeup to nearby Fishers Island. The same moraine that Fishers Island is made out of resurfaces in Watch Hill, the village which contains Napatree Point. This region of the Northeastern United States made by glacial moraines from the

Wisconsonian glaciation The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cor ...

is known as the

Outer Lands The Outer Lands is the prominent terminal moraine archipelagic region off the southern coast of New England in the United States. This eight-county region of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York, comprises the peninsula of Cape Cod and th ...

History

In 1898, the federal government purchased at the elbow of Napatree Point for the construction of a coastal artillery installation, one of many such forts designed to protect the eastern entrance to Long Island Sound as part of a defense network for

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Fort Mansfield Fort Mansfield was a coastal artillery installation located on Napatree Point, a long barrier beach in the village of Watch Hill, Rhode Island, Watch Hill in Westerly, Rhode Island. History Fort Mansfield and similar forts stretching from Galvest ...

began operations in 1901. However, war games in 1907 demonstrated a fatal design flaw, and by 1909 it was removed from the list of active posts."Fort Mansfield" by Clement A. Griscom, 1984. Sponsored by the Westerly Historical Society In 1926, the government put the land up for sale. A New York developer proposed Sandy Point be subdivided in 674 lots. A private syndicate of Watch Hill residents mobilized to prevent the construction of "cheap little houses" and protect the exclusive character of their town. The purchase was finalized in 1928, and all government buildings at Fort Mansfield were demolished that winter. Today, all that remains are the three concrete gun emplacements, which were left behind. The syndicate was unable to meet mortgage payments and in 1931 the land was foreclosed upon by the Washington Trust Company. The

caught New England by surprise. Forty-two people were in their Fort Road homes on Napatree when the hurricane struck, and 15 died. The storm demolished all the homes built on Napatree as well as one of the Fort Mansfield gun emplacements. It created several

breachways A breachway is the shore along a channel, or the whole area around the place where a channel meets the ocean. The Rhode Island coastline has many breachways on its map. Today's permanent breachways have rock jetties that line the sides of the ch ...

in the spit. The first of these breachways was near the current beach club bathhouses. At least three more broke the connection between Sandy Point and Napatree Point, severing it from the mainland. Sandy Point is now an island in Little Narragansett Bay. Combined with the 1938 hurricane, erosion by the sea has caused the Napatree beach line to retreat some 200 feet since the mid-1930s. In 1940, the Sandy Point portion was deeded to Alfred Guildersleeve of Stonington, Connecticut. In 1945, the remainder of the land was sold to the Watch Hill Fire District for $10,000.

Present-day conservation

Napatree Point is now a wildlife preserve and a popular public beach protected by the Watch Hill Conservancy and Fire District, which have hired wardens to protect the area's wildlife and habitat. These wardens work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the piping plover, a federally endangered species. Napatree is also home to

deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the re ...

fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

osprey The osprey (''Pandion haliaetus''), , also called sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor reaching more than in length and across the wings. It is brown o ...

s and a resting area for migratory birds.

References

External links

The Watch Hill ConservancyAerial view of Napatree Point (bottom) and Sandy Point (top left), as they now exist after the 1938 hurricane split the peninsula in two
{{coord, 41.316884, N, 71.873932, W, region:US-RI_scale:30000, display=title Nature reserves in Rhode Island Landforms of Washington County, Rhode Island Westerly, Rhode Island Spits of the United States Protected areas of Washington County, Rhode Island