Rhode Island map

Where Rhode Island is

Rhode Island is the smallest state, on the southern New England coast between Connecticut and Massachusetts. It is only about 48 miles from north to south and 37 miles east to west, and Narragansett Bay takes up a large share of that. Clockwise from the north: Massachusetts along surveyed lines to the north and east, the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and Connecticut along a surveyed line to the west. Block Island lies 9 miles offshore. With 1,545 sq mi of total area (about 1,000 of it land), the state is 50th in area but 44th in population, giving it the second-highest density after New Jersey.

Major cities

Providence County, which covers the northern third of the state, holds about 60 percent of Rhode Islanders. Newport, the colonial capital and Navy town, is on Aquidneck Island in the bay.

Geography

• Highest point — Jerimoth Hill, 812 ft, in Foster near the Connecticut line, the lowest state high point in New England.
• Narragansett Bay — a 25-mile estuary reaching from the ocean to Providence, with more than 30 islands. The largest, Aquidneck (Newport, Middletown, Portsmouth), is the "Rhode Island" that gave the state its name. Conanicut (Jamestown) and Prudence are next.
• Coast — about 40 miles of open ocean shore along the south from Point Judith to Watch Hill, but roughly 400 miles of tidal shoreline counting the bay. See the coastlines map.
• Rivers — the Blackstone, which drops through Pawtucket and became the Seekonk and then the Providence River; the Pawtuxet through Cranston and Warwick; the Pawcatuck on the Connecticut line; the Wood and the Sakonnet, a tidal strait east of Aquidneck.
• Lakes — Scituate Reservoir west of Providence is the largest body of fresh water and the capital's water supply; Worden Pond in South Kingstown is the largest natural lake.
• Terrain — flat sandy coastal lowland in the south and east, rising to rocky forested uplands under 800 ft in the west.

Borders

Every land border is surveyed and none is a river. The Connecticut line, disputed for a century and a half, was finally fixed in 1887 and runs almost due north from the Pawcatuck River mouth. The Massachusetts border makes a step-shaped line across the north (fixed in 1846 after an even longer dispute) and comes down the east side of the bay along the Seekonk and Sakonnet approaches, so that the East Bay towns of Bristol, Warren, Tiverton and Little Compton were Massachusetts until 1747. The ocean border extends around Block Island.

Regions of Rhode Island

Greater Providence and the Blackstone Valley in the north, the West Bay (Warwick, East Greenwich), the East Bay (Bristol, Barrington, Warren), Aquidneck Island and Newport, South County (the Washington County beach towns from Narragansett to Westerly), and the rural Western Rhode Island towns of Foster, Glocester and Exeter. Block Island is its own town, New Shoreham.

Related maps

• Rhode Island county map — all 5 counties; they have no county governments.
• Blank Rhode Island map — outline for printing.
• Printable Rhode Island map.
• Providence — the capital and largest city, founded 1636.
• Neighbors: Massachusetts, Connecticut.
• Northeast, New England, Eastern Time Zone.
• Geography: coastlines, state high points, lakes.