Here are two that offer different experiences, as well as some Native American history.
Osamequin Nature Preserve, Barrington
Access: Off Route 195, drive 4.5 miles south on Route 114. Use a turnaround to get on Route 114 north and the lot is on the right.
Parking: Available.
Difficulty: Easy
BARRINGTON Ospreys, egrets and deep, dark holes dug by fiddler crabs in the mud flats are among the sights you can see from the trails along the west shore of the Barrington River’s Hundred Acre Cove in the Osamequin Nature Preserve.
Osamequin, or Massasoit Ousamequin, was chief in the 1600s of the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Nation, who lived on the land called Sowams that stretched from Providence to Bristol. The preserve, managed by the Barrington Land Conservation Trust, gives walkers an idea of what the estuary habitats, coastal marshes, plants and wildlife looked like 400 years ago.
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LITTLE COMPTON Benjamin Simmons dammed Cold Brook in the mid-1700s to create a pond and raceways to harness the waterpower to run his gristmill.
The mill is long gone, but the pond became the center of a natural sanctuary for birds and wildlife.
In the 1960s, Bill Chace and his family built five more ponds connected with a network of trails.The Chace family sold the land in 1995 to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, which maintains the family-friendly public preserve.
Today, the 433-acre refuge, named the Simmons Mill Pond Management Area, is unique because of the wide, easy-to-walk trails and dozens of hand-lettered signs identifying trees, wildlife, rock formations and the land s rich history.
PORTSMOUTH After hiking most of the winter on Rhode Island’s mainland, I traveled to Aquidneck Island to explore a different landscape. I was not disappointed by the beautiful scenery and the history.
The Gentleman Farms owned in the late 1800s by the Vanderbilt, Taylor and Barstow families stretched as far as the eye could see and down gentle, green slopes to the Sakonnet River.
The stone walls, farm lanes, cart paths, sweeping fields and other evidence of the land’s rich past are still visible while walking the Sakonnet Greenway Trail.
The greenway includes 10 miles of public trails that loop through woods, pastures and marshland and around a golf course, soccer fields and still-active farms.