Rhode Island.
The Ocean
State.

Roger Williams founded Providence in 1636 after being banished from Massachusetts for his radical views — that the state had no authority over the individual conscience, that Native American land could not be seized without purchase, and that civil government must remain separate from religious authority. These were not fringe opinions he held privately; he argued them loudly and paid the price. The colony he built on those principles became the first in the world to guarantee freedom of conscience to all its residents, including Jews, Quakers, and Catholics.

Rhode Island’s relationship with the Constitution was as ornery as everything else about the state. It refused to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, voted down ratification twice, and only joined the Union in May 1790 — the last of the original thirteen, two years after New Hampshire provided the decisive ninth vote. Rhode Island held out until the new federal government threatened economic sanctions. Even then the margin was two votes. The Ocean State has never been easy to push around.

Newport defined American luxury for a gilded generation. The Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Belmonts built “cottages” on the Cliff Walk that were in fact French chateaux and Italian Renaissance palaces, each attempting to outdo the last in conspicuous grandeur. The Breakers, completed for Cornelius Vanderbilt II in 1895, had 70 rooms and cost the equivalent of $10 billion in today’s money. Newport’s America’s Cup sailing races, held here from 1930 to 1983, drew the world’s eyes to this small Rhode Island peninsula.

Providence has always been the working heart of the state. Its jewelry industry — costume jewelry, silverware, and gold-filled goods — once made it the jewelry capital of the world, with the Providence Jewelry District supplying department stores from coast to coast. Brown University on College Hill has anchored an intellectual tradition since 1764. The Federal Hill neighborhood’s Italian restaurants have kept a culinary tradition alive for a century. And RISD — the Rhode Island School of Design — has made Providence a genuine center of American art and design education.

Today Rhode Island is the smallest and one of the most densely populated states, packing over a million people into 1,045 square miles. It has more miles of coastline per square mile than any state. Narragansett Bay’s quahog clam defines the Rhode Island clam chowder tradition — clear broth, not the New England milk chowder that Massachusetts insists on. The Del’s Lemonade frozen drink is a summer institution. And the state’s official name — the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations — was the longest official state name in the country until a 2020 referendum shortened it to simply Rhode Island.