Portsmouth Hurricane Risk: The Night the Sakonnet River Took Island Park

A Trolley Park on the Sakonnet: Island Park, 1897 to 1938

Before it was just a neighborhood name, Island Park was an actual amusement park -- one of the trolley parks that sprang up across New England at the turn of the century, built to give streetcar companies a reason for people to ride the line on weekends. It opened in 1897, reachable via the Newport-Fall River Street Railway, on the Portsmouth shore of the Sakonnet River. In 1925 the Cashman family purchased the park and renamed it Cashman's Park, expanding its attractions through the following decade.

What they built was genuinely substantial for a small-town amusement park. Island Park featured two documented carousels -- one built by the Barker family in 1898, another by the celebrated carousel maker Charles I. D. Looff in 1905 -- plus a roller coaster known as "The Bullet," built in 1926. There was a dance hall and ballroom that hosted major touring bands, a fun house nicknamed "Brownie's 101 Troubles," a shore dinner hall, tethered hot-air-balloon rides, boat rentals, inter-island swimming races, a shooting gallery, and acrobatic performances. Dance marathons were a regular draw, with one documented at 111 hours. This was not a modest boardwalk attraction -- it was a genuine regional destination, and for four decades it was Portsmouth's answer to the question of where you took your family on a summer weekend.

Fire, Storm, and Fire Again: A Park That Had Already Survived Disaster Three Times

Island Park's story was not without trouble well before 1938. The park suffered a devastating fire in 1927, storm damage to the roller coaster in 1929, and a second dance-hall fire in 1933. Each time, it rebuilt and kept operating. That resilience is part of what makes the ending of the story land as hard as it does: this was a park that had already weathered a decade of real disasters and come back from each one -- until the storm that finally didn't leave anything to rebuild.

September 21, 1938: The Great New England Hurricane and a 12-Foot Wall of Water

The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 struck the region on September 21 of that year, and in Portsmouth specifically it is remembered for one devastating image: a wall of water roughly 12 feet high surging up the Sakonnet River and slamming into Island Park. The storm killed roughly 600 people across the region -- and 18 of those deaths happened specifically at Island Park, a sobering, dated, local casualty figure distinct from the broader regional toll.

The park did not reopen. Fire, a second fire, and storm damage had all failed to end Island Park across more than a decade of trouble -- the 1938 hurricane is what finally did. A trolley park that had drawn crowds to the Sakonnet River shore for forty-one years was gone in a single afternoon.

A Second Portsmouth Data Point: Green Animals Topiary Garden's Own 1938 Story

Island Park is not the only documented Portsmouth institution carrying a scar from that same storm. Per Wikipedia's own account of Green Animals Topiary Garden -- the historic 7-acre estate on Narragansett Bay that today is managed by the Preservation Society of Newport County -- George Mendonça joined the garden's staff after 1938 hurricane damage there, later becoming co-creator of its topiary menagerie and remaining as grounds manager until 1985. That is a smaller, quieter data point than the destruction of an entire amusement park, but it corroborates the same underlying fact from a second, independent Portsmouth source: the September 1938 hurricane left a real, documented mark on this specific town, not just on the region in general.

What Island Park Looks Like Today

Today, Island Park survives only as the name of a neighborhood and beach area in Portsmouth. No trace of the amusement park itself remains as an operating attraction -- no carousel, no roller coaster, no dance hall. If you drive through Island Park today expecting to find some remnant of the trolley-park era, you will not find one; the name is what is left, not the place it once described. That gap between what the name used to mean and what is actually there now is, in its own way, the clearest evidence of how completely the 1938 hurricane ended that chapter of Portsmouth's history.

Current Storm-Surge and Sea-Level-Rise Risk, Per Rhode Island's Own Planning Data

Setting the 1938 story aside, Rhode Island's Division of Statewide Planning has published current, town-specific projections for Portsmouth that are worth taking seriously on their own terms. Under a combined scenario pairing a 100-year storm with 7 feet of sea-level rise, the state projects approximately 37 miles of roadway inundation in Portsmouth -- a figure that ranks Portsmouth the 7th most vulnerable town statewide for that combined storm-surge-and-sea-level-rise scenario.

On bridges specifically, the state's data flags the Sakonnet River Bridge -- the same river that carried the 1938 surge into Island Park -- with "-84 inches of freeboard" under a 7-foot sea-level-rise scenario, meaning the bridge would have substantially less clearance than it needs under that projection. Portsmouth ranks 13th statewide for combined bridge vulnerability to sea-level-rise and storm-surge threats. These are the state's own planning figures, not this page's editorializing, and they describe projected risk under specific modeled scenarios -- not a prediction of when or whether any particular storm will occur.

What This Page Cannot Tell You

This page does not state current hurricane evacuation zones, shelter locations, or the name and date of any current-year storm, because that information changes and belongs with the agencies responsible for it, not with a historical overview like this one. For current, authoritative evacuation-zone maps, shelter information, and storm preparedness guidance for Portsmouth, go directly to the Town of Portsmouth's own emergency management page and the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA).

Nothing here is emergency-management, insurance, or engineering advice. The 1938 Island Park story and the Green Animals corroboration are historical record; the roadway-inundation and bridge-freeboard figures are the state's own current planning projections under specific modeled scenarios. Confirm current flood-zone designation, evacuation status, and insurance implications for any specific Portsmouth property directly with the Town of Portsmouth, RIEMA, and a licensed insurance professional.