Storm Prep in Westerly, Rhode Island: What the Exposure Actually Looks Like
Most storm-prep pages for a coastal town lead with a generic checklist. This one leads with one of the most dramatic, best-documented storm events on this entire site: on September 21, 1938, the Great New England Hurricane destroyed all 39 cottages of the Napatree Point summer colony in Watch Hill -- a village and state-chartered Fire District sitting entirely within the Town of Westerly -- in a single day. Fifteen people died, and some survivors were swept clinging to floating wreckage across Little Narragansett Bay into Connecticut. The storm did not just flatten buildings; it permanently reshaped Napatree Point itself, breaching the spit in multiple places and separating what is now Sandy Point from Napatree's western tip. This page walks through what is actually documented about storm history and land-use decisions here, and it is direct about what it will not do: invent a dollar figure for generators, storm shutters, impact windows, or flood barriers, none of which was confirmed in the research behind this page. Westerly's property tax rate, by contrast, is confirmed and stated below.
September 21, 1938: The Day Napatree Point’s Cottage Community Was Destroyed
Napatree Point is a 1.5-mile sandy spit extending west from Watch Hill, sheltering Little Narragansett Bay. Per the Watch Hill Conservancy's own history, 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." In 1898 the U.S. government acquired 60 acres at the point's end and built Fort Mansfield, a coastal-defense installation with three gun batteries garrisoned by up to 100 soldiers, but the fort was decommissioned in 1907 after engineers found a critical design flaw; three concrete gun-emplacement ruins are still visible today. After the fort was sold to private developers, a summer-cottage community grew along Napatree's dune crest, reaching 39 cottages by 1938.
On September 21, 1938, the Great New England Hurricane destroyed that entire community in a single day. Per Wikipedia's Watch Hill entry and the Conservancy's own history: all 39 cottages, Fort Road, the Yacht and Beach Clubs, and a bathing pavilion were destroyed. Fifteen Watch Hill-area residents died, and some survivors were carried on floating wreckage that was swept across Little Narragansett Bay into Connecticut. The storm also permanently altered the point's geography, breaching it in multiple places and separating what is now Sandy Point -- which subsequently drifted north across the bay -- from Napatree's western tip. This is not a vague warning about "what storms can do" to a coastal spit; it is a specific, dated, documented disaster at this exact location.
1815 and 1938: Two Storms That Reshaped the Same Point
The 1938 hurricane was not the first storm to permanently change Napatree Point. Per the Watch Hill Conservancy's history, the dense forest cover that gave the point its name was destroyed by the Great Gale of 1815 -- more than a century before the cottage community it later carried was wiped out in 1938. By the time the 1938 hurricane hit, the point had already lost its natural forest buffer for well over a hundred years, leaving a bare, low sandy spit exposed directly to Block Island Sound and Little Narragansett Bay.
Taken together, the 1815 gale and the 1938 hurricane are two separate, real, dated events at the same specific landform, 123 years apart, each one permanently changing what stood on Napatree Point. That is a genuinely unusual amount of documented, repeated storm impact concentrated on one small piece of coastline, and it is worth reading as direct evidence of sustained exposure rather than a single unlucky year.
A Real, Storm-Driven Land-Use Decision: Why Napatree Was Never Rebuilt
After the 1938 hurricane leveled the cottage community, the Watch Hill Fire District bought most of Napatree Point in 1945 specifically to preserve it as public conservation land rather than allow anyone to rebuild there -- a real, documented, storm-driven land-use decision, not a hypothetical about what a town could do after a disaster. In 2013, the Fire District granted a conservation easement to the newly organized Watch Hill Conservancy, which has since managed stewardship and educational programming there in partnership with the district. Today Napatree Point Conservation Area has no roads or houses and is open to the public for walking, birdwatching, and surfcasting.
That same 1945 Fire District ownership is now central to a separate, unresolved legal dispute over public access to Napatree Point via Fort Road, a pathway across a Fire District parking lot -- the Watch Hill Fire District and Watch Hill Conservancy sued the Town of Westerly and the State of Rhode Island in 2023 over a 2008 town resolution designating that path a permanent public right-of-way. As of the most recent reporting found for this page (May 2025), settlement talks were underway with no resolution finalized. This page takes no position on that dispute and mentions it only because it shows the same 1945 storm-recovery land purchase still shaping real, current legal and land-access questions in Westerly; readers who want the current status should search for the latest local reporting before relying on anything stated here.
Exposure Varies Across Westerly: Watch Hill, Misquamicut, and the Villages In Between
Westerly was first settled by English colonists in 1661 and incorporated as a town on May 13, 1669, on the eastern shore of the Pawcatuck River, which forms the town's western border with the Town of Stonington, Connecticut -- Westerly is a genuine Rhode Island border town with Connecticut. Per Wikipedia, total town area is 74.8 square miles: 30.1 square miles of land and 44.7 square miles of water. Three named salt ponds line the coast -- Maschaug, Winnapaug, and Quonochontaug -- and the town includes numerous villages beyond Watch Hill, including Misquamicut, Weekapaug, Bradford, Avondale, Dunn's Corners, Shelter Harbor, Mastuxet, Potter Hill, White Rock, and Winnapaug.
Storm exposure is not uniform across all of these. Watch Hill sits on a peninsula at Rhode Island's southwestern-most point with Napatree Point as its exposed western spit, discussed above. Misquamicut, a separate village within Westerly along the town's southern Atlantic-facing shore, is a barrier beach with its own livelier "beach strip" identity -- Misquamicut has its own dedicated future page on this site, so its detailed history and specifics are covered there rather than here, but it is worth naming as another real, ocean-facing part of Westerly with its own exposure profile, distinct from Watch Hill's understated old-money character. Treat "storm prep in Westerly" as a range of situations that depends on exactly which village a property sits in, and get a site-specific evaluation from a licensed local contractor or engineer rather than assuming one plan fits every village.
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 Westerly property, because no current, Westerly-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, and check the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency's own guidance before budgeting any specific project.
Property taxes are part of the total-cost-of-ownership picture, 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), Westerly's rate is $7.11 per $1,000 of assessed value for both Residential Real Estate and Commercial property -- notably, Westerly does not split those two rates the way some neighboring towns do -- and $11.59 per $1,000 for Personal Property. For comparison only, per that same document, Narragansett's residential rate is $6.79, Newport's is $8.69, Middletown's is $9.06, and Portsmouth's is $13.28, putting Westerly toward the lower end of that set. Per Zillow (a snapshot as of April 30, 2026), Westerly's typical home value is $626,390, up 8.3% year-over-year, and average rent is $1,946 per month, up 10.8% year-over-year; per the U.S. Census Bureau's separately-sourced, differently-timed figures, median home value is $466,600 and median rent is $1,257 -- both figures are labeled here rather than combined, since they reflect different metrics and vintages. Whatever a property costs to buy or rent, factor storm-prep costs -- once quoted by a licensed local contractor -- into total ownership cost alongside the purchase price and the confirmed mill rate above.
Putting It Together: Storm Prep Planning for Westerly, RI
The honest version of storm prep in Westerly starts with what is actually documented: the Great Gale of 1815 stripping Napatree Point of its namesake forest cover, and the Great New England Hurricane of September 21, 1938 destroying an entire 39-cottage community there in a single day, killing 15 people and permanently reshaping the point itself. The Watch Hill Fire District's 1945 decision to buy Napatree specifically to prevent rebuilding is a real, storm-driven land-use choice that still shapes the area today, including a separate, unresolved legal dispute over public beach access that this page presents neutrally rather than taking a side on.
What this page will not do is convert any of that history into an invented dollar figure for storm-hardening work -- no such figure was confirmed here, though the property tax rate itself is confirmed at $7.11 per $1,000 of assessed value for residential real estate (FY2026, per the Rhode Island Division of Municipal Finance). For current storm tracking, watches, and warnings, use the National Weather Service and NOAA directly; for evacuation planning and general preparedness guidance, contact the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency and Westerly's own emergency management office; 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.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Napatree Point's naming (per the Watch Hill Conservancy's history, Dutch trader Adriaen Block explored the area in 1614 and reportedly named it "Nap of Trees" for its forest cover), the destruction of that forest cover in the Great Gale of 1815, Fort Mansfield (built 1898, decommissioned 1907), the growth of a 39-cottage summer community by 1938, and the September 21, 1938 Great New England Hurricane's destruction of that entire community (all 39 cottages, Fort Road, the Yacht and Beach Clubs, and a bathing pavilion destroyed; 15 deaths; survivors swept on wreckage across Little Narragansett Bay into Connecticut; the point breached and Sandy Point separated) are drawn from the Watch Hill Conservancy's own "History of Napatree" page and Wikipedia's Watch Hill, Rhode Island entry. The Watch Hill Fire District's 1945 purchase of Napatree to prevent rebuilding, and the 2013 conservation easement granted to the Watch Hill Conservancy, are drawn from the same sources. The 2023-2025 Fort Road/Napatree public-access lawsuit between the Watch Hill Fire District and Conservancy against the Town of Westerly and State of Rhode Island, including its unresolved status as of a May 2025 settlement-talks report, is drawn from The Public's Radio and Westerly Sun reporting and is presented neutrally, without taking a side; readers should check for more recent news before relying on its status. Westerly's founding (settled 1661, incorporated May 13, 1669), total area (74.8 square miles: 30.1 land, 44.7 water), its Pawcatuck River border with Stonington, Connecticut, its salt ponds (Maschaug, Winnapaug, Quonochontaug), and its villages (including Watch Hill and Misquamicut) are drawn from Wikipedia's Westerly, Rhode Island entry. Misquamicut is mentioned only briefly here, per this site's own discipline of not exhausting a village's story ahead of its own dedicated future page. The confirmed FY2026 property tax rates ($7.11 per $1,000 for Residential Real Estate and Commercial, $11.59 for Personal Property), along with the comparative figures for Narragansett, Newport, Middletown, and Portsmouth, are drawn from the Rhode Island Division of Municipal Finance's official FY2026 Tax Rates document (2025 tax roll, assessment date December 31, 2024). Real estate figures (typical home value $626,390, up 8.3% year-over-year; average rent $1,946, up 10.8% year-over-year) are drawn from a Zillow snapshot as of April 30, 2026; the separately-sourced median home value ($466,600) and median rent ($1,257) are drawn from U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts. No current Westerly-specific storm-prep cost figures (generators, storm shutters, impact windows, flood barriers) were confirmed in this research. Nothing on this page is emergency management, engineering, or financial advice -- for current evacuation planning, contact the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency and Westerly's own emergency management office 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.