Scarborough State Beach

The state built Scarborough into a public beach in the 1930s, opening a pavilion in 1937, and it quickly became the principal saltwater destination for the whole of Rhode Island. Over the decades the state added to it, buying up neighboring stretches of shore in the 1980s to create a two-part complex, north and south, that runs for the better part of a mile along Ocean Road. A major renovation in the late 1980s gave it much of the boardwalk and pavilion look it wears today.

It has stayed the people's beach ever since. Because it faces the open Atlantic just north of Point Judith, the surf here is real, and the sixty-odd acres of the complex spread wide enough to soak up big summer crowds without feeling packed. Sunbathers take the sand, walkers take the boardwalk, and families rotate between the water and the shaded picnic shelters up on the bluff.

The stone ruins that stand at the beach's edge are the last of a mansion called Windswept, a twenty-one-room summer estate built in 1895 by the Davis family, whose fortune came from a wildly popular patent medicine sold as Perry Davis's Vegetable Pain Killer. For a time the grand house even ran as an upscale shore restaurant called Cobb's by the Sea, one of the fashionable stops of Narragansett's resort heyday.

By the middle of the twentieth century the mansion had emptied out, and over the following years it suffered vandalism and a run of fires until what remained was torn down in 1974. The state stepped in to save the surviving stone carriage house from demolition, and today that rugged fragment stands alone above the surf, a stone window onto the sea and a reminder of the vanished world of Gilded Age Narragansett. It is one of the most photographed spots on the whole beach.

Much of Scarborough's charm is in its old-resort bones. The long boardwalk runs behind the sand and invites the kind of unhurried strolling and people-watching that beaches with only a parking lot never manage, and the observation tower rising above the pavilion gives a wide, breezy view up and down the coast and out over the waves.

Down on the sand the draw is simple: honest Atlantic Ocean. The waves have enough push for bodysurfing and boogie boards when the swell is up, the water carries the clean cold of the open sea even in high summer, and the beach is broad enough to find your own patch of sand. Picnic shelters, showers, and the pavilion make it easy to settle in for a full day rather than a quick dip.

Scarborough runs along Ocean Road in Narragansett, an easy drive south from the village center and only a few minutes north of the Point Judith lighthouse and the Block Island ferry. It is a seasonal state beach, so the swimming season, lifeguards, and services concentrate in the warm months, and a paid parking lot serves the beach and fills early on hot weekends.

Come in the morning to claim parking and a good spot on the sand, then make a day of it: swim or bodysurf the Atlantic, walk the boardwalk to the observation tower, and wander up to the Windswept ruins for the view and the photos. The surf here is genuine ocean surf, so keep an eye on the flags and the lifeguards, and let the kids play where the water is watched. It is the quintessential Rhode Island beach day, sand and salt and a little history, all on one shore.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.