On Jamestown a lighthouse stands at the southern tip of the island and an old windmill stands on North Road. This map prints them both, Beavertail Light and the Jamestown Windmill, along with the Beavertail Lighthouse Museum, Artillery Park, the Conanicut Battery National Historic Park, the Dutch Island Lighthouse, the Conanicut Island Lighthouse, the Shoreby Hill Historic District, the Jamestown Fire Department Memorial Museum, Conanicut Park, Jamestown Shores and East Shore Road.
Jamestown is in Newport County, almost entirely on Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 from public survey records and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief around Artillery Park and the Conanicut Battery National Historic Park comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data. The streets come from Census Bureau files, down to East Shore Road, and the Census Bureau puts the town at 35.3 square miles, only 9.7 of them land; the rest is the bay around Conanicut, the second largest island in Narragansett Bay, and the town also takes in Dutch Island and Gould Island. Artillery Park and Beavertail Light are on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked them against National Park Service records. Jamestown had 5,559 people at the 2020 census.
Conanicut Island
Giovanni da Verrazzano and his crew visited Narragansett Bay in 1524, fur traders used Dutch Island around 1622, and in 1638 English colonists arranged with the Native Americans to graze sheep on Conanicut. Ferries ran to Newport by 1675, and in 1678 the island was incorporated as the town of Jamestown, with about 150 people, named for James, Duke of York, who became King James II. By 1710 many of today’s island roads were already laid out. The island had no running water to turn a waterwheel, so in 1728 the town built a windmill to grind corn with the sea breeze.
Artillery Park, at North Road and Narragansett Avenue, sits on a high point in the southern part of the island. It was laid out in 1656 as a burying ground and a militia training ground, though burials there appear to date only from the 1740s. During the Revolution, local militia built an earthen battery overlooking the West Passage, now the Conanicut Battery, west of Beaver Tail Road; the British occupied the island and took it over. Its earthworks, about 150 feet long and 75 feet wide, survive on a 22-acre site the town owns, with a plaque the Daughters of the American Revolution placed in 1931, and the Friends of Conanicut Battery and the Jamestown Historical Society look after it.
The windmill
The Jamestown Windmill stands on North Road in the Windmill Hill Historic District. It’s a smock mill, 30 feet tall, built in 1787 to replace the mill destroyed during the British occupation, and it ground flint corn for animals and finer meal for farm families until 1896. The Jamestown Historical Society keeps it, and it joined the National Register in 1973.
Three lighthouses
Beavertail marks the entrance to Narragansett Bay from the southern tip of the island. The town’s records mention a watch house there in 1705, and a wooden tower went up in 1749, which its page calls the third lighthouse established in the Thirteen Colonies. The granite tower that stands now, 64 feet from the ground to the beacon, dates to 1856. The Coast Guard automated the light in 1989, and the Beavertail Lighthouse Museum, in the assistant keeper’s house from 1898, tells the story of the light and of many other Rhode Island lighthouses. The light sits in Beavertail State Park, 153 acres of shoreline for hiking, picnics and fishing.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Places: Conanicut Park, Jamestown Shores, Clarks Village, Narragansett Terrace, Artillery Park, Beavertail Light, Conanicut Battery National Historic Park, Conanicut Island Lighthouse, Dutch Island Lighthouse, Firing Pier, Fort Getty Park, Fort Wetherill State Park, Friends Meetinghouse, Jamestown Arts Center, Jamestown Museum, Jamestown Philomenian Library, Jamestown Police Department, Jamestown School-Lawn, Jamestown Town Hall, Jamestown Windmill, Mackerel Cove Beach, Marsh Meadows Wildlife Preserve, Narragansett Pier, Racquet Road Wildlife Refuge, Sand Point, Shoreby Hill Historic District, Taylor Point Lookout and Windmill Hill Historic District.
Streets and roads: Narragansett Trl, Capstan St, Carr Ln, Eldred Ave, Stern St, Fort Getty Rd, High St, Hamilton Ave and Hedge Rd.
The Dutch Island Lighthouse was first lit on January 1, 1827, to mark the West Passage, and its 42-foot brick tower went up in 1857. Abraham Pietersen van Deusen of the Dutch West India Company ran a trading post on Dutch Island around 1636. During the Civil War the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (Colored) trained on the island and built its first earthwork defenses, and from 1898 to 1947 the island was Fort Greble. At the northern tip of Conanicut, the Conanicut Island Lighthouse was built in 1886 to help the ferry between Jamestown and Newport. It went dark in 1933, was sold the next year, and is a private home today; it appears in Wes Anderson’s 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom.
A summer island
In 1873 the town began steam ferry service to Newport, and the reliable ferry turned the farming island into a place for day trips and summer vacations. The island’s population tripled between 1870 and 1900, and Jamestown had nine hotels in 1903. The Shoreby Hill Historic District, north of the business district, was farmland until the late 1800s. Ernest W. Bowditch laid it out as a fashionable summer neighborhood in 1898 and 1911, rising from the shore of Jamestown Harbor, and its ninety houses are mostly shingle style. It joined the National Register in 2011. Bridges followed the ferries, first to Saunderstown in 1940, then the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge in 1969, the one on Rhode Island’s 2001 state quarter.
The landscape painter William Trost Richards lived and worked on the island from 1881 until his death in 1905, and the bacteriologist Eleanor Albert Bliss was born here. Will Henry, a Jamestown resident, created the comic strip Wallace the Brave, set in a Rhode Island town loosely based on Jamestown. The Jamestown Fire Department Memorial Museum, Conanicut Park and Jamestown Shores are on the map as well.
This map of Jamestown is a fine addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of an island town in the middle of Narragansett Bay. KNOWOL made it in 2026 for people who call Jamestown home, from Conanicut Park to Beavertail, and it shows the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Jamestown map.
Sources
- Jamestown, Rhode Island, Wikipedia
- Artillery Park, Wikipedia
- Conanicut Battery, Wikipedia
- Jamestown Windmill, Wikipedia
- Beavertail Lighthouse, Wikipedia
- Beavertail State Park, Wikipedia
- Dutch Island (Rhode Island), Wikipedia
- Conanicut Island Light, Wikipedia
- Shoreby Hill Historic District, Wikipedia
