Rhode Island - The Ocean State 2

Rhode Island – The Ocean State

Introduction:

Rhode Island is officially known as the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.  Rhode Island is located in the New England region of the United States.  Rhode Island is the smallest state in terms of area and it is the 7th least populated and yet it is also the 2nd most densely populated of all the 50 states.  Incidentally, Rhode Island’s official name is the longest of all the states in the United States.

Rhode Island is bordered to the west by Connecticut to the north and east by Massachusetts, and to the south by the Atlanta Ocean (Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound).   Rhode Island also shares a small maritime border with New York.

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Rhode Island in the United States

Providence is the state capital and most populous city in Rhode Island.

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Providence

Rhode Island was the 13th and last of the original colonies to ratify the newly written constitution of the United States.

Origin of the Name Rhode Island and Providence Plantations:

Despite its name, most of Rhode Island is located on the mainland of the United States.  Its official name is State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which is derived from the merger of four Colonial settlements.  The settlements of Newport and Portsmouth were situated on what is commonly called Aquidneck Island today, but it was called Rhode Island in Colonial times.

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Aquidneck Island

Providence Plantation was the name of the colony founded by Roger Williams in the area now known as the city of Providence.  This was adjoined by the settlement of Warwick; hence the plural Providence Plantations.

It is unclear how Aquidneck Island came to be known as Rhode Island, but two historical events may have influenced the name.

Explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano noted the presence of an island near the mouth of Narragansett Bay in 1524 which he likened to the island of Rhodes, part of modern Greece.  Subsequent European explorers were unable to precisely identify the island that Verrazzano had named, but the Pilgrims who later colonized the area assumed that it was Aquidneck.

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Giovanni da Verrazzano

Adriaen Block passed by Aquidneck during his expeditions in the 1610s, and he described it in a 1625 account of his travels as “an island of reddish appearance,” which was “een rodlich Eylande” in 17th-century Dutch, and one popular notion is that this Dutch phrase might have influenced the name Rhode Island.

The earliest documented use of the name “Rhode Island” for Aquidneck was in 1637 by Roger Williams. The name was officially applied to the island in 1644 with these words: “Aquethneck shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rodes or Rhode-Island.”  The name “Isle of Rodes” is used in a legal document as late as 1646.  Dutch maps as early as 1659 call the island “Red Island” (Roodt Eylant).

Geography:

Rhode Island covers an area of 1,214 square miles.  The mean elevation of the state is 200 feet.  It is only 37 miles wide and 48 miles long, yet the state has a tidal shoreline on Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean of 384 miles.

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