You are looking at the West Passage, one of two entrances to Narragansett Bay, New England's largest estuary. There are over 30 islands in the bay. There is very little commercial shipping in the West Passage since it is much shallower than the East Passage. Among the landmarks to be seen from this point are the following:
(1) On clear days you may be able to see Block Island as a hazy shadow on the horizon. Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown, sighted the island in 1524. In 1614 it was charted by the Dutch explorer Adrian Block, who named it for himself. This 9.734 square mile (25.2 km) part of Rhode Island is over 17 miles south of Beavertail light but only 14 miles wast of Montauk Point, New York. Ferries to Block Island run from Point Judith and seasonally from Newport.
(2) Point Judith Light, 7.2 miles away, is the southernmost landmark on the west side of the Bay. Three light structures have been built on this site. The first was built in 1810. The present 51-foot octagonal tower was built in 1856. It was fitted with a fourth-order Fresnel lens from Paris, which remains in place today. The upper half of the tower is painted brown and the lower half white.
(3) To the west is the town of Narragansett. If you look carefully and you may be able to make out The Towers, the last remaining portion of a Victorian-period casino built between 1883 and 1886 that burned down during the Great Fire of September 12, 1900. One of the state's most iconic structures was designed by the famed architectural form of McKim, Mead and White. The Rhode Island State House in Providence is just one of the many famous buildings designed by the firm.
(4) What many people mistake for a submarine is the Whale Rock Light foundation, all that is left of a caisson lighthouse destroyed by the Great Hurricane of 1938 (see the separate sign about the Whale Rock).
(5) The large development to the west is Bonnet Shores Beach Club, a private club that began in 1928 as part of the Bonnet Shores summer residential community. The cliffs by the club are 60-feet high and extend nearly a mile.
(6) Just visible up the Bay is the University of Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay Campus. The 200-acre campus was a coastal defense site during the Spanish-American War through World War II. The prominent white building is the university's research atomic reactor, the only reactor in the state. The campus is home to the Graduate School of Oceanography, one of the top five oceanic institutions in the country, and is the homeport for the university's oceanographic research vessel RV Endeavor.
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