Storm Prep in Portsmouth, Rhode Island: What the 1938 Hurricane Actually Did
Most storm-prep pages for a coastal town open with a generic list of hurricane-season tips. This one opens with a real, dated, sourced event instead: on September 21, 1938, a hurricane sent a 12-foot wall of water surging up the Sakonnet River and permanently destroyed Island Park, a real trolley-accessible amusement park that had operated in Portsmouth since 1897, killing 18 people at that one location. That is the honest benchmark for what serious storm risk looks like on this stretch of Aquidneck Island -- not a hypothetical, and not exaggerated for effect. This page walks through that history, connects it to the Rhode Island Division of Statewide Planning's current sea-level-rise and storm-surge data for Portsmouth, and is direct about what it will not do: invent a dollar figure for generators, shutters, or flood barriers, none of which was confirmed in the research behind this page. Portsmouth's property tax rate, by contrast, is confirmed and is stated below.
Island Park: A Real Amusement Park, Destroyed by a Real Storm
Island Park is a real neighborhood and beach area in Portsmouth today, and most visitors have no idea it was once the site of a full trolley-accessible amusement park. Per East Bay RI reporting, the park opened in 1897, reachable via the Newport-Fall River Street Railway, and the Cashman family purchased and expanded it in 1925 under the name Cashman's Park. At its peak it featured two documented carousels -- one built by the Barker family in 1898, another by the celebrated carousel maker Charles I. D. Looff in 1905 -- along with a roller coaster called The Bullet, built in 1926, tethered hot-air-balloon rides, boat rentals, a dance hall that hosted major touring bands, a fun house nicknamed Brownie's 101 Troubles, a shore dinner hall, and even dance marathons, one lasting a documented 111 hours.
The park had already survived real damage before 1938: a devastating fire in 1927, storm damage to the roller coaster in 1929, and another dance-hall fire in 1933. None of that was fatal to the park's operation. What finally ended it was the hurricane of September 21, 1938, which brought a 12-foot wall of water surging up the Sakonnet River and permanently destroyed the amusement park. That storm killed roughly 600 people across the wider region -- and 18 of those deaths happened specifically at Island Park. Today, no trace of the amusement park remains as an operating attraction; "Island Park" survives only as the name of the neighborhood and beach.
Why an 88-Year-Old Storm Still Matters for Prep Planning Today
It would be easy to file the 1938 hurricane away as pure history, but it is directly relevant to anyone evaluating storm risk for a Sakonnet River-facing property in Portsmouth today. A 12-foot surge is not a flooded basement or a soggy lawn -- it is documented, sourced water high enough to wipe out a built-up commercial property and kill 18 people who were there when it hit. That is the real ceiling for what a major hurricane can do on this shoreline, and it is worth holding onto as a mental benchmark rather than assuming that "storm prep" only ever means trimming trees and topping off a generator's fuel tank.
This page is not claiming the 1938 storm is representative of a typical season, and it is not predicting when the next storm of that scale will arrive -- no one can. What it is doing is refusing to understate the risk with vague, feel-good language, the way a lot of coastal real-estate content does. For current storm tracking, watches, and warnings, use the National Weather Service and NOAA directly; for anything specific to evacuation planning near Island Park or anywhere else in Portsmouth, contact the Portsmouth Emergency Management Agency directly rather than relying on a historical account alone.
Current State Data: 37 Miles of Roadway, and a Bridge Flagged at "-84 Inches of Freeboard"
The 1938 hurricane is history, but the Rhode Island Division of Statewide Planning's own Portsmouth fact sheet (planning.ri.gov) shows the underlying exposure has not gone away. Under a combined scenario -- a 100-year storm layered on top of 7 feet of projected sea-level rise -- the state projects roughly 37 miles of roadway inundation in Portsmouth, about 78% of it local roads, ranking Portsmouth 7th most vulnerable town statewide for storm-surge road impacts. That is a meaningfully worse ranking than Portsmouth's position for sea-level rise alone, which suggests storm surge specifically, not just gradual water-level creep, is the bigger threat to this town's road network.
One bridge figure from that same fact sheet is worth repeating on its own: under the 7-foot sea-level-rise scenario, the Sakonnet River Bridge -- Portsmouth's own link east to Tiverton -- is flagged with "-84 inches of freeboard," meaning the modeled water level would run roughly seven feet past the clearance the bridge was built to keep beneath it. This page presents that figure exactly as the state fact sheet states it: a long-term planning projection, not a claim that the bridge is unsafe today. For the full breakdown of specific vulnerable roads, linear-footage figures, and bridge rankings, see this site's Portsmouth flood-zones and coastal-insurance pages, which cover that state data in more depth than repeated here.
Why Portsmouth Has More Storm Exposure Than Its Land Area Suggests
Per Wikipedia, Portsmouth's total area is 59.3 square miles, and 36.1 of those square miles -- about 61% -- are water, not land: Narragansett Bay, the Sakonnet River, and the channels around Prudence, Patience, Hope, and Hog islands, all within town boundaries. Only 23.2 square miles are land. Britannica separately states the town covers about 23 square miles, which appears to describe land area only rather than contradicting Wikipedia's more detailed breakdown -- but the practical point stands either way: a town that is roughly three-fifths water, by its own official area breakdown, has a lot more shoreline-adjacent property, relative to its size, than a similarly named "23 square mile town" might suggest at first glance.
That geography also means storm exposure is not evenly distributed. A parcel on Prudence Island -- ferry-dependent, with no bridge to the mainland -- faces a different storm-prep reality than a parcel on the Aquidneck Island mainland section of town, which in turn differs from a parcel directly on the Sakonnet River near Island Park itself, where the 1938 surge actually hit. Treat "storm prep in Portsmouth" as a range of situations depending on exactly where a property sits, not a single town-wide answer.
What This Page Will Not Invent: Costs -- Plus the Confirmed Mill Rate
This page will not state a dollar figure for a generator, storm shutters, impact windows, or a flood barrier for a Portsmouth property, because no current, Portsmouth-specific cost figures for any of that were independently confirmed in the research behind this page. Those costs vary by property size, existing construction, contractor, and current material and labor pricing -- a number published here would likely be stale or simply wrong by the time a reader used it. Get a current, written estimate directly from a licensed local contractor or storm-hardening supplier before budgeting any specific project.
Property taxes are part of the total-cost-of-ownership picture too, and here the number is confirmed rather than guessed: per the Rhode Island Division of Municipal Finance's official FY2026 Tax Rates document (2025 tax roll, assessment date December 31, 2024), Portsmouth's residential real estate rate is $13.28 per $1,000 of assessed value. Rates are set annually, so contact the Portsmouth Tax Assessor's office directly to reconfirm the current figure before budgeting against it, in case a newer tax roll has since taken effect.
Putting It Together: Storm Prep Planning for Portsmouth, RI
The honest version of storm prep in Portsmouth starts with what actually happened here: on September 21, 1938, a 12-foot surge up the Sakonnet River destroyed a real, decades-old amusement park at Island Park and killed 18 people at that single location, out of roughly 600 regional deaths from that storm. That is not ancient abstraction -- it is the clearest evidence available that this shoreline can produce genuinely severe, fatal storm surge, and it should inform how seriously a buyer or owner takes prep here, whether or not another storm of that scale arrives soon.
Layered on top of that history is the state's own current planning data: roughly 37 miles of projected roadway inundation under a combined storm-surge-plus-sea-level-rise scenario, a 7th-place statewide vulnerability ranking for that impact, and a specific, sourced warning about the Sakonnet River Bridge's clearance under future sea-level rise. What this page will not do is convert any of that into an invented dollar figure for storm-hardening work -- no such figure was confirmed here, though the property tax rate itself is confirmed at $13.28 per $1,000 of assessed value (FY2026, per the Rhode Island Division of Municipal Finance). For current evacuation planning, contact the Portsmouth Emergency Management Agency directly; for a flood-zone determination on a specific parcel, use FEMA's Flood Map Service Center; and for an actual cost estimate on any storm-prep project, get a written quote from a licensed local contractor.
Ready to talk to a local Portsmouth, RI agent?
Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. The Island Park amusement park history -- its 1897 opening as a trolley park, the Cashman family's 1925 purchase and renaming to Cashman's Park, the 1898 Barker family carousel and 1905 Charles I. D. Looff carousel, The Bullet roller coaster (built 1926), the 1927 fire, 1929 storm damage, and 1933 dance-hall fire, and the September 21, 1938 hurricane's 12-foot storm surge up the Sakonnet River that permanently destroyed the park and killed 18 people at that location (out of roughly 600 regional deaths from the same storm) -- is drawn from East Bay RI reporting. Current sea-level-rise and storm-surge figures -- the roughly 37-mile combined-scenario roadway inundation projection, Portsmouth's 7th-place statewide storm-surge vulnerability ranking, and the Sakonnet River Bridge's "-84 inches of freeboard" flag under 7 feet of sea-level rise -- are drawn from the Rhode Island Division of Statewide Planning's own Portsmouth fact sheet (planning.ri.gov); see this site's Portsmouth flood-zones and coastal-insurance pages for the fuller road-by-road breakdown of that same dataset. Geography figures (59.3 square miles total, 23.2 square miles land, 36.1 square miles water per Wikipedia; Britannica's separately scoped "23 square miles" land-only figure) are drawn from Wikipedia's and Britannica's own Portsmouth, RI entries. No current Portsmouth-specific storm-prep cost figures (generators, shutters, flood barriers) were confirmed in this research. Portsmouth's property tax rate, however, is confirmed per the Rhode Island Division of Municipal Finance's official FY2026 Tax Rates document (2025 tax roll, assessment date December 31, 2024): $13.28 per $1,000 of assessed value for residential real estate. Nothing on this page is emergency management, engineering, or financial advice -- for current evacuation planning, contact the Portsmouth Emergency Management Agency directly; for a flood-zone determination on a specific parcel, use FEMA's Flood Map Service Center; and for a current, property-specific storm-prep cost estimate, consult a licensed local contractor.