Cominicut Point

Cominicut State Park lies at the tip of an elegant cuspate foreland near the north end of Narragansett Bay. Although the greatest fetch is from the south, north storms must play a significant role in maintaining this feature's shape. The tip of the spit narrows to form the long bar that curves southward out to the offshore lighthouse. At the base of the landform, on the south side, the beach forms spits across the mouth of a small stream mouth estuary - the name of road is "Old Mill" and it appeared the site had a long industrial history prior to the residential development that dominates today.

Salt Cove

What became Waterplace in the early 1990s began as a large salt marsh fed by the small Woonasquatucket and Mashassuck rivers, but 350 years of history has transformed it - several times. In Puget Sound, shoreline parks sometimes have several interpretive signs denoting how an area has changed since settlement in the 1860s. At Waterplace, the 1860s sign is the sixth of eight. Two hundred years of European History had already transformed the landscape several times over.

Providence River

The Providence River is now little more than a canal separating downtown Providence from the academic neighborhoods of RISD and Brown on the east side. In the hurricanes of 1938 and 1954 (Gloria) (and probably during the gale of 1815, too) the Providence River delivered enormous volumes of water into downtown Providence. So in the 1960s, they built the country's first hurricane barrage. These are big gates that can be closed when storm surges threaten.

Even when hurricanes don't threaten, the structure controls water levels, in part to facilitate the Waterfire celebrations every summer, when bonfires are lit in torchieres down the center of the river and people stroll the along the river walk or guide gondolas. Guess it says something for the diverse functions served by estuaries. Imagine the river lined with wharves in the 1700s, bustling with the slave trade.