Fishermen's Memorial State Park-Campground History
One of Rhode Island’s most
popular camp grounds began its park service following a dedication
by Governor Frank Licht in 1970.
Its purchase and parcel assembly was begun two decades
earlier by Governor Dennis Roberts in 1953.
The site was taken from a former World War II defense
installation, known as Fort
Greene, named after Rhode Island
Revolutionary War hero, Nathanael Greene of Warwick.
The name, Fishermen’s Memorial honors all the fishermen –
commercial and sports—of the Narragansett area and, at the time, it
singled out the Tuna tournament, based locally at the nearby port of Galilee.
The tournament began in 1958, was popular through the 1960s
and 1970s; it still continues today but in a much reduced form.
The history of the park’s location is both deeper and darker
than its sports fishing association and recreational camping.
Point Judith Neck is the farthest extension of the
Rhode Island mainland into the
Atlantic.
Subject to rough storms, a dangerous ledge, and criss-crossing
tides, a light house to guide sailors into
Narragansett Bay was first erected in 1810.
In colonial times, the peninsula was used by the local
Narragansett Planters as a natural corral for their flocks of sheep,
herds of cattle, and their famous Narragansett Pacers, a popular
breed of riding horses.
Simply by fencing off the northern neck, a gigantic, protected
meadow was created.
Point Judith’s most important historical role, however,
occurred in the war years of the 1940s.
It anchored the western passage into Narragansett Bay while
projecting the observation for potential enemies out into the
Atlantic.
Narragansett Bay was considered by naval strategists of the
first half of the 20th century as the best safe haven and
rallying point for war ships of any place from Cape Cod to Cape
Hatteras, rivaled only by Hampton Roads,
Virginia.
Viewed from the air and revealed by the study of area maps,
clearly, the finger-like points of land and islands from Point
Judith to Sakonnet Point guard the entrances into the Bay.
During the war, these finger-like features took on the aspect
of armored eagle talons.
From Fort
Greene at Point Judith to Fort Church
in Little Compton, a series of coastal artillery emplacements
guarded the water approaches to significant ship yards, torpedo and
Quonset Hut factories, test firing ranges, ammunition storage dumps,
materiel staging areas, destroyer and aircraft carrier berths, and
the Newport Naval Station and War College.
Offshore electric warning systems intercepted potential
submarine attack. Mine
fields were installed, and nets were strung across the Bay
entrances.
Fort Greene,
at Point Judith was divided into three distinct “reservations,”
East, West, and South.
In the East Reservation, known as Battery Hamilton, a two-gun
battery featuring 16” guns was installed in the year between
September of 1940 and September of 1941.
The shells fired from these guns weighed over a ton each;
they could reach a distance out to sea of 26 miles.
Paired with a matched set in Little Compton the arcs covered
by these batteries overlapped, making the surface approach by enemy
ships towards Narragansett Bay
highly problematical.
These guns were housed in concrete bunkers and covered by
earth and appeared from the outside and from above as low coastal
hills.
Within the bunkers were radio rooms and
ammunition storage.
A second battery was begun at the West Reservation of Fort
Greene, now Fishermen’s Memorial, but was never completed.
What was completed was a command post in and observation silo
to assist in directing fire.
The silo, still standing, and used as a park headquarters,
was designed to look like a farm complex.
It is just one of the small number of surviving structures
marking Rhode Island’s
participation in World War II.