Newport Harbor: Colonial Port, Gilded Playground and Tourist Destination

In 1639 Nicolas Easton settled in Newport, drawn to the sheltered harbor a few nautical miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Newport joined Boston, New York and Baltimore, competing for the maritime commerce of the fledging English colonies. Development of the harbor continued and in 1680 the “Proprietors of the Long Wharf,” a group of wealthy merchants, financed the building of the Long Wharf. Ships arriving in Newport now had a “wharf” and the Proprietors collected “wharfage fees.”

Newport, cooled by southwest breezes, grew as a summer colony. Wealthy New Yorkers and Southern plantation owners came for the climate and to avoid disease. The “Gilded Age” followed, and the Fall River Line ran luxurious steamboats from New York. The Long Wharf provided ideal access to Newport.

The U.S. Navy used Narragansett Bay as a major base on the East Coast that included, in 1884, the Naval War College. Newport played an important part in WWII. After the war the harbor remained a working port with commercial wharfs lining Thames Street.

As fishing and lobstering declined and the gilded age faded, tourists arrived. Upscale hotels and restaurants abound, cruise ships anchor in the Bay, and four million tourists visit.

Kurt Schlichting, Ph.D., is the E. Gerald Corrigan ‘63 chair in humanities and social sciences emeritus at Fairfield University. Kurt served as the dean and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and he is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. His academic research leads the field of historic geographical information system, HGIS, which he used to study the Irish in Newport. He has lectured for the Newport Museum of Irish History and presented at academic conferences in the United States and abroad. Kurt was a visiting fellow at the Moore Research Institute, National University Ireland, Galway.