Map of Westerly, Rhode Island in 2026

Westerly runs from its granite downtown on the Pawcatuck River to the summer cottages of Watch Hill, at the southwestern tip of Rhode Island, and the beaches of Misquamicut. This map prints Watch Hill and Misquamicut, Wilcox Park, the Flying Horse Carousel, the Watch Hill Lighthouse, East Beach, the Watch Hill Historic District, the Babcock-Smith House Museum, the Main Street Historic District, the Bradford Village Historic District, Main Street and Atlantic Avenue.

Westerly is in Washington County, across the Pawcatuck River from Connecticut.

KNOWOL made this map in 2026 from public survey records and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief around Wilcox Park and East Beach comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the town sits on a glacial moraine, a line of small hills left by the last Ice Age. The streets come from Census Bureau files, down to Atlantic Avenue, and the Census Bureau puts the town at 74.8 square miles, 30.1 of them land. Wilcox Park and the Flying Horse Carousel are on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked them against National Park Service records. Westerly had 23,359 people at the 2020 census.

Misquamicut and the first settlers

Before the English came, this was Misquamicut, home to the Narragansett people. Elder John Crandall, one of the town’s founders, settled here in 1661, and the town of Westerly was founded on May 13, 1669, on the east shore of the Pawcatuck; it’s believed the name comes from its place as the westernmost town in the colony. Charlestown was set off from it in 1738, and Hopkinton followed later. Dr. Joshua Babcock, a physician, Revolutionary general and Rhode Island Supreme Court justice, was born in Westerly, and Governor Samuel Ward lived here for many years.

Westerly’s other great story is stone. The Crumb Quarry opened in 1834, the first in town, and from about 1870 into the 1950s Westerly granite, a pinkish stone that also came in blues and reds, went into buildings up and down the East Coast. The Smith Granite Company was one of the biggest employers, and its cutters’ work stands by the hundreds on the battlefields of Gettysburg and in squares, cemeteries and public buildings across the country, the Georgia State Capitol among them. Many Italian families came to work here around 1900, most from Sicily and Calabria, and a good number from the town of Acri. Westerly also holds two of the oldest parades in the United States: the Memorial Day Parade, begun in 1867, and the Veterans Day Parade, begun in 1917.

Downtown

Wilcox Park, 14 acres at 44 High Street, came to the town in 1898 as the bequest of Harriet Wilcox, whose husband Stephen Wilcox invented the non-explosive boiler and founded the engineering firm of Babcock and Wilcox with another Westerly man, Herman Babcock. Warren H. Manning, who had worked with Frederick Law Olmsted, designed it, and since the 1960s it has grown into an arboretum with a dwarf conifer garden, an herb garden and a perennial garden set off by Westerly granite walls. The Romanesque Westerly Library of 1892 faces it, and the Summer Pops and Shakespeare in the Park fill it in summer. Wilcox Park has been on the National Register since 1973 as the Wilcox Park Historic District, 84 buildings on 50 acres.

The Main Street Historic District keeps nineteen houses in Greek Revival, Italianate and Second Empire styles on Main Street, Maple Avenue and School Street, with the Pawcatuck Seventh Day Baptist Church of 1847 to 1848; it joined the Register in 1978. Bradford, named for Bradford in West Yorkshire, England, is shared with Hopkinton. The Bradford Village Historic District, 224 acres with 149 contributing buildings, joined the Register in 1996.

The Babcock-Smith House Museum was built around 1734, and Dr. Joshua Babcock lived there. He wrote to Benjamin Franklin and hosted him at the house, and its page says George Washington likely visited too; Babcock was Westerly’s first postmaster in the 1770s and ran the post office and a general store from the house. Orlando Smith bought the place in 1848, repaired it and started a successful granite business on an outcrop he’d found on the land. The house became a museum and joined the National Register in 1972.

Watch Hill and the shore

Watch Hill, at the very southwestern tip of Rhode Island, takes its name from the lookout colonists kept on the hill during the French and Indian War and the Revolution. It became a summer resort in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with big Victorian cottages along the peninsula, and the Watch Hill Historic District, 176 contributing buildings on 629 acres, joined the Register in 1985. The Flying Horse Carousel, at the end of Bay Street, is believed to date from around 1876 and was left in Watch Hill by a traveling carnival in 1879. Its twenty horses hang from chains and swing outward as it turns, which gives the ride its name, and its page calls it the oldest operating carousel in the United States with horses suspended that way. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

A watchtower and beacon stood at Watch Hill from 1745. The Watch Hill Lighthouse was first built in 1807 under an act President Thomas Jefferson signed, and the present 45-foot tower dates from 1856. Its keeper Jared Starr Crandall received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1873 for his rescue work after the steamer Metis was wrecked off Watch Hill, and in 1879 his widow, Sally Ann Crandall, became the first woman keeper there. East along the shore, Misquamicut, once called Pleasant View, took back the region’s old Narragansett name in 1928; it means “Red Fish Place” or “Salmon Place.” Part of its oceanfront became Misquamicut State Beach in 1959. East Beach is on the map as well, and so is Atlantic Avenue.

This map of Westerly is a fine choice for an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of a granite town on the sea. KNOWOL made it in 2026 for people who call Westerly home, from Watch Hill to Misquamicut, 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 Westerly map.

Sources

• Westerly, Rhode Island, Wikipedia
• Wilcox Park, Wikipedia
• Main Street Historic District (Westerly, Rhode Island), Wikipedia
• Bradford, Rhode Island, Wikipedia
• Babcock-Smith House, Wikipedia
• Watch Hill, Rhode Island, Wikipedia
• Flying Horse Carousel, Wikipedia
• Watch Hill Light, Wikipedia
• Misquamicut, Rhode Island, Wikipedia