Westerly Hurricane Risk: What Happened to Napatree Point

A Peninsula Built to Take the First Hit

Napatree Point extends west from Watch Hill for about a mile and a half, an undeveloped sandy spit with no roads or houses today, standing directly between the open water of Block Island Sound and the calmer Little Narragansett Bay behind it. Per the Watch Hill Conservancy's own history page, Dutch trader Adriaen Block explored the area in 1614 and reportedly named the landform "Nap of Trees" for its dense forest cover -- a name that evolved into "Napatree."

That forest and, later, an entire cottage community built where it once stood, would go on to meet two of the most destructive storms in this stretch of coast's recorded history. This page focuses on Napatree and Watch Hill specifically. Rhode Island's broader 1938 death toll -- 312 people statewide, per the Town of Narragansett's own history page, discussed in more regional depth on this site's Narragansett hurricane-risk page -- is the wider context this one, sharply local story sits inside.

1815: The Great Gale That Stripped Napatree Bare

Long before any cottages stood on Napatree Point, the Great Gale of 1815 destroyed the dense forest for which the point was named. Per the Watch Hill Conservancy's own account, the storm wiped the point clean of its tree cover entirely. The point was later redeveloped -- first with a boarding house and hotel, and in 1898 with a U.S. government coastal-defense installation called Fort Mansfield, built on 60 acres at the point's western end with three gun batteries garrisoned by up to 100 soldiers. Fort Mansfield was decommissioned in 1907 after engineers found a critical design flaw; three concrete gun-emplacement ruins remain visible on Napatree today. After the fort's sale to private developers, a summer-cottage community grew up along Napatree's dune crest, eventually reaching 39 cottages by 1938.

September 21, 1938: Thirty-Nine Cottages, Gone in a Single Day

The Great New England Hurricane made landfall on September 21, 1938, and Napatree Point took a direct, catastrophic hit. Per Wikipedia's Watch Hill entry and the Watch Hill Conservancy's own history of Napatree, the storm destroyed all 39 cottages on the point, along with Fort Road, the Yacht and Beach Clubs, and a bathing pavilion. Storm waves broke over rooftops and, per ecoRI News' reporting on the point's history, plowed through a cement seawall as if it were transparent. Private docks were reduced to rubble.

Fifteen Watch Hill-area residents died that day. Some survivors were swept off the point clinging to floating wreckage that carried them across Little Narragansett Bay into Connecticut before they could reach safety -- a firsthand-documented detail of just how fast and how far the water moved. It is a distinct, local death toll from the 312 killed statewide in Rhode Island that same afternoon, and it happened at one specific, named place: a single row of summer cottages on a barrier spit that, by the next morning, no longer existed.

A Point That Moved: How One Storm Redrew the Map

The 1938 hurricane did not just destroy what stood on Napatree -- it permanently changed the point's shape. The storm cut several channels through the peninsula; per Wikipedia's Sandy Point Island entry, only one of those breaches persisted, separating what is now Sandy Point from Napatree's western tip just beyond the site of the old fort. Sandy Point has continued to migrate since, driven by longshore drift -- Wikipedia describes it today as a slender, roughly one-mile-long barrier beach that has drifted north of Napatree, with its northern acreage now sitting across the Connecticut state line and the bulk of its remaining acreage still in Rhode Island; ecoRI News' reporting separately describes the drift as around a mile and a half over the eight decades since. Treat the exact distance as approximate -- sources describe it somewhat differently -- but the underlying fact is not in dispute: the 1938 storm physically separated a piece of Rhode Island's coastline and sent it drifting north across the bay, where a version of it remains today.

Napatree Point itself reportedly covers roughly the same total acreage now as it did before the storm -- per ecoRI News, "just in a different place." That is as good a one-line summary as any of what this storm did here: not simply destruction, but a rearrangement of the coastline that is still visible on a map today.

1945: Preservation Instead of Rebuilding

Napatree's cottage community was never rebuilt. In 1945, the Watch Hill Fire District bought most of Napatree Point specifically to preserve it as public conservation land rather than allow new construction -- the origin of the Fire District's present-day ownership and control of much of the point, which is also the central fact behind a separate, ongoing dispute over public access to Fort Road that this site covers elsewhere and does not revisit here. In 2013, the Fire District granted a conservation easement to the newly organized Watch Hill Conservancy, which has since managed stewardship and educational programming on the point in partnership with the district. Today, Napatree Point Conservation Area is open to the public for walking, birdwatching, and surfcasting, with no roads or houses -- a direct, physical legacy of the 1938 storm's destruction eight decades on.

Hurricane Carol, 1954: Two Hundred Homes Washed Away in Westerly

Sixteen years after 1938, Hurricane Carol made landfall on August 31, 1954. Per the New England Historical Society, Carol washed away 200 homes in Westerly, Rhode Island -- a town-wide figure, not a Watch Hill-specific one, and no separate Napatree or Watch Hill damage count for Carol was independently confirmed in the research behind this page. The storm's regional numbers help explain why: winds on Block Island reached 135 mph, the highest ever recorded there at the time, and Narragansett Bay, Buzzards Bay, and New Bedford Harbor all saw storm surges above 14 feet. Across New England, Carol killed 65 people and injured roughly a thousand more; damage reached an estimated $642 million, making it the costliest storm on record up to that point. Rhode Island's governor at the time, Dennis Roberts, declared martial law and activated the National Guard.

Hurricane Sandy, 2012: A Long Night for Watch Hill's Fire Department

Hurricane Sandy made its final US landfall well to the west, in New Jersey, but it still gave Watch Hill a genuinely difficult night. Per the Watch Hill Fire Department's own account of the storm, the department responded to more than 50 emergency calls over the roughly 36-hour period spanning October 29-30, 2012 -- including rescuing an elderly couple who had stayed in their home despite evacuation orders, securing leaking propane cylinders that were floating in the commercial area along Bay Street, rescuing a resident suffering carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning generator, and clearing fallen trees to reopen roads. The department documented flooding along Bay Street, in nearby parking lots, and on Fort Road, along with beach erosion near the Yacht Club, and it received mutual aid from Westerly Rescue, the Rhode Island National Guard, and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Out at Napatree Point itself, Sandy flattened dunes and pushed parts of the peninsula back by an estimated 30 feet, per ecoRI News' reporting; the same reporting, citing researcher Peter August, notes the point recovered within about five years as beachgrass regrew and dunes rebuilt naturally. It is a smaller, quieter story than 1938 or Carol, but it fits the same pattern: even a storm that missed Rhode Island directly can still move real sand and water at this specific, exposed point.

What Current Storm-Surge and Evacuation Data Says -- and What This Page Cannot Tell You

This page does not state current hurricane evacuation zones, shelter locations, flood-insurance requirements, 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. No town-specific, current storm-surge or sea-level-rise mileage or bridge-vulnerability figure for Westerly was found or independently confirmed in the research behind this page, and none is invented here.

Nothing on this page is emergency-management, insurance, or engineering advice. The 1815, 1938, Carol, and Sandy details above are historical record, sourced as described below; they describe what has already happened at Napatree Point and in Watch Hill, not a prediction of what will happen next. For current, authoritative evacuation-zone maps, shelter information, and storm-preparedness guidance specific to Westerly and Watch Hill, go directly to the Town of Westerly's own emergency management office and the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA), and confirm flood-zone designation, evacuation status, and insurance implications for any specific property with a licensed insurance professional.