The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (commonly known as Rhode Island) is the smallest state by land area in the United States, and the state with the longest official name. Rhode (pronounced "Road") Island is part of the New England region, and was the first of the thirteen original American colonies to declare independence from British rule, signaling the start of the American Revolution.
Coventry Cranston East Providence Jamestown Lincoln Middletown Narragansett Newport North Kingstown North Scituate Pawtucket Providence Rumford Smithfield South Kingstown Warwick West Greenwich West Warwick Westerly
The state's common name, Rhode Island, actually refers to the largest island in Narragansett Bay, also known as Aquidneck Island, on which the city of Newport is located. Aquidneck Island is also locally referred to as Newport - though it in fact has three distinct townships on it. The origin of the name is unclear. Some historians think that Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, upon discovering Block Island, just southwest in the Atlantic Ocean, named it Rhode Island because of its similarity in shape to the Greek island of Rhodes. Later settlers, mistaking which island Verrazzano was referring to, gave the name to Aquidneck Island instead. Other historians believe that the name is derived from Roodt Eylandt, old Dutch for "red island," given to the island by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block due to the red clay on the island's shore.
Despite most of the state being part of the mainland, the name Rhode Island leads some out-of-staters to mistakenly believe that the entire state is an island, or some obscure region of New York State. Rhode Island is nicknamed "The Ocean State".
Rhode Island covers an area of approximately 1,214 square miles (3,144 km²) and is bordered on the north and east by Massachusetts, on the west by Connecticut, and on the south by Rhode Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. The mean elevation of the state is 200 feet (60 m). Located within the New England province of the Appalachian Region, Rhode Island has two distict natural regions. Eastern Rhode Island contain the lowlands of the Narragansett Bay, while Western Rhode Island forms part of the New England Upland.
It shares a water border with New York. Narragansett Bay is a major feature of the state's topography. Block Island, known for its beaches, lies approximately 12 miles (19 km) off the southern coast of the mainland. Within the Bay, there are over 30 islands. The largest is Aquidneck Island, shared by the municipalities of Newport, Middletown, and Portsmouth. Among the other islands in the Bay are Hope, Prudence, and Despair.
Rhode Island is mostly flat with no real mountains. Rhode Island's highest natural point is Jerimoth Hill, only 812 feet (247 m) above sea level.
Rhode Island has a unique and fascinating culture that distinguishes its people not only from other regions, but also from neighboring New England states.
Rhode Islanders speak with a distinct accent that many compare to a "Brooklyn" or a cross between a New York and Boston accent. The residents of this state also speak with a unique vernacular that many have dubbed "Rhode Islandese" or "Rhode Islander" (pronounced Roe-Die-Lander). The letter 'r' is often dropped at the end of a word, ("water" becomes "wata"). The letter 'r' is also added in to the ending of words ("soda" becomes "soder"). Utilization of the word "wicked" is also very common among Rhode Island youth to provide greater emphasis on something (e.g., "That's wicked funny" is a relatively common phrase).
Perhaps due to its large percentage of Italian and Portuguese residents, cooking and food are very important to Rhode Islanders. In fact, there are several foods and dishes unique to Rhode Island including "weiners," which are hot dogs covered in a meat sauce and chopped onions, "saugy", which is a cased sausage often substituted for hot dogs, "stuffies", sometimes called "quahogs", which are large cherrystone clams mixed with stuffing and spicy minced sausage and then baked in the shell, and and "dynamites," which is a sandwich made with ground hamburger and spices found in the French-Canadian areas of the state.
"Calamari," or fried squid rings, is also a favorite and found on the menu of most restaurants, as are "grinders," which are a hero or hoagie sandwich made with Italian specialty cold cuts. Chourico (a spicy Portuguese sausage) and peppers, eaten with hearty bread, is also popular among the state's large Portuguese community. Rhode Island has its own version of clam chowder, "Rhode Island clam chowder", which is clear.
Rhode Islanders have a particular fascination with coffee. There are coffee shops on almost every corner and it is common belief that more coffee ice cream is sold here per-capita than any other state. The Official State Drink of Rhode Island is coffee milk, a beverage created by mixing milk with coffee syrup. This unique syrup was invented in the state and is bottled and sold in most Rhode Island supermarkets. Frozen Lemonade, a mixture of ice-slush, lemons and sugar is also immensely popular in the summer, especially Del's Frozen Lemonade, a company based in Cranston.
Rhode Islanders are also known to be very superstitious. The belief in vampires, especially in the rural parts of the state, was widespread up until the late 19th century. There are several well-documented cases in which families disenterred deceased relatives, then removed and burned their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire who was responsible for illness and misfortune that the family had been suffering. The most famous of these cases is that of 19-year-old Mercy Brown who died in Exeter, Rhode Island in 1892. It is believed that this widely-reported event inspired much of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Stories of haunted mansions, lighthouses, and even water-towers persist to this day.
The Fox show Family Guy takes place in a fictional town in RI named Quahog.
The state was notorious for organized crime activity from the 1950s into the 1990s when the Patriarca crime family held sway over most of New England from their Providence headquarters. Although the power of organized crime has greatly diminished in Rhode Island over the last 20 years, its residents are still stigmatized by popular perceptions of rampant graft and corruption that have haunted the state for decades.
Colonial Era
In 1614 the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block visited the island that is now called Block Island. Native American inhabitants included the Narragansett tribe, occupying most of the area, and the closely related Niantic tribe. Most of the Native Americans were decimated by introduced diseases, intertribal warfare, and the disastrous King Philip's War, but remnants of the Niantic merged into the Naragansett tribe, where they remain on a federally recognized reservation.
Rhode Island was the first of the British colonies in America to declare its independence on May 4, 1776. However, Rhode Island was the last of the original 13 states to ratify the United States Constitution (May 29, 1790)—doing so after being threatened with having its exports taxed as a foreign nation.
As the Industrial Revolution moved large numbers of workers into the cities, a permanently landless, and therefore voteless class developed. By 1829, 60% of the state's free white males were ineligible to vote.
During the Civil War, Rhode Island was one of the Union states. Rhode Island furnished 25,236 fighting men, of which 1,685 died. On the home front, Rhode Island, along with the other northern states, used its industrial capacity to supply the Union Army with the materials it needed to win the war. Rhode Island's continued growth and modernization led to the creation of an urban mass transit system, and improved health and sanitation programs.
Since the Great Depression, the Rhode Island Democratic Party has dominated local politics. For years, the Speaker of the House, always a Democrat, has been one of the most powerful figures in government. The Republican Party has been restricted to the rural and suburban parts of the state, and occasional "good government" reform candidates, who criticize the state's high taxes and the excesses of Democratic domination. Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey, Governor Donald Carcieri of East Greenwich, and former Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci of Providence ran as Republican reform candidates.
Although enormously well-liked, Cianci has had his share of legal problems. In 1984 he pleaded no contest to assault and received a five-year suspended sentence. He spent the rest of the 80's hosting a radio talk show. In 1991 he ran for mayor and was reelected. In 2002, however, he was indicted for racketeering, conspiracy, and extortion and is serving a five-year sentence. Cianci is merely the latest example of a perceived culture of corruption commonly associated with Rhode Island politics.
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*The highest temperature recorded in Rhode Island was 104°F (40°C), recorded on August 2, 1975 at Providence. The lowest temperature in Rhode Island, -13 °F (-25 °C), was recorded on February 6, 1996 at Greene. Monthly average temperatures range from a high of 82 °F (28 °C) to a low of 20 °F (-7 °C).Lonely Planet Maps (external source)
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* This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Source wikipedia.
