WARWICK Rhode Island is full of surprising, one-of-a-kind places with rich histories that you sometimes discover on the way to someplace else.
I stumbled on one while driving on Post Road to Goddard Memorial State Park (more on that hike later.)
I stopped at a sign for “Chepiwanoxet,” and read that Native Americans fished from a nearby island before colonial farmers divided the land into “thatch lots” and harvested salt marsh hay for livestock feed. Later, after a railroad station opened in the 1830s, a hotel, shore dinner hall and small cottages formed a beach resort.
The sign also reported that the island was the site of the first airplane factory in the United States. The seaplanes tested and built there were flown in World War I.