The Eastern Rhode Island-Massachusetts Boundary Zone

Abstract

F OR more than 250 years the eastern Rhode Island-Massachusetts boundary was a subject of dispute. At times both states angrily threatened to call out the militia, and large sums of money had been expended in litigation before final settlement was made in I899. Henry Gannett termed the case in some respects the most remarkable boundary case with which this country has had to do. ' The fundamental trouble lay in the violation of the geographic unity of the Narragansett basin by the location of the original western boundary of Plymouth Colony in mid-channel of Narragansett Bay. As settlement proceeded, the tributary area of the two urban centers of the region, Newport and, more important later, Providence, came to coincide approximately with this drainage basin. In the eighteenth century Narragansett Bay became the seat of an important oversea shipping trade. Then Rhode Island pressed for, and gained control of, the eastern littoral of Narragansett Bay.2 This controversial and compromissary eastward movement of the line represented a partial adjustment of the boundary to major divisions in the cultural landscape. The last significant change in the boundary particularly illustrates this conformance. In i86i Massachusetts secured from Rhode Island by trade territory into which Fall River had expanded. In exchange for this strategic bit of land Massachusetts ceded to Rhode Island territory which was a part of the near hinterland of Providence. But if the boundary has become more accordant with major features, just as certainly has it been set down with a notable lack of conformity with minor ones. It is partly accordant in situation but discordant in site. Most of it is unmarked by fences, property lines, or roads, because it is a straight-line boundary superimposed on a region of already developed irregular road and landsubdivision pattern. A variety of local adjustments to the boundary have appeared, but they are little related to road and property pattern, the medium through which conventional occupance responses on many other boundaries are created. The line traverses country that is a rather typical cross section of southern New England-ranging from derelict, isolated hill country to industrial outskirt regions of urban agglomerations. On the eastern side of the drowned estuary of Narragansett Bay, where our