Outdoor Guide | Summer Fun

Rhode Island On Two Wheels

A guide to the Ocean State's many bike paths

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There’s no feeling quite like a bike ride on a warm day. Luckily for us, Rhode Island has bike paths all over the state. Get on your bike and go. 


Blackstone River Bikeway

The mighty Blackstone River helped power the birth of the American Industrial Revolution, and remnants of this great economic upheaval are all around you as you travel the 12 miles of the Blackstone River Bikeway. Once a wasteland, the river gets cleaner with each passing year, with now-silent mills converted to condos, and canoes and kayaks plying the waters where canal boats once brought goods to market.

A cruise down the Blackstone Bikeway from
 Woonsocket to Cumberland will be rewarded with:

  • Passing through the four mill villages built by the Lonsdale Company in the 19th century: Lonsdale Old Village (1834), Lonsdale New Village (1860), Ashton (1867), and Berkeley (1871).
  • Staring up at the towering span of the Ashton Viaduct Bridge as you ride on the path below.
  • The occasional thrill of a Providence and Worcester Railroad freight train passing on the still-important transportation corridor.
  • A stop at the Captain Wilbur Kelly House in Lincoln, a former mill owner’s home that now serves as a visitor center and transportation museum.
  • Glimpses of the 1828-48 Blackstone Canal paralleling the river.
  • Crossing the Pratt Dam over the Blackstone River.
  • A pedal through a peaceful meadow that was once the Lonsdale Drive-In Theater.
  • A boardwalk over a section of the Lonsdale March, the largest in Rhode Island
  • The Valley Falls Heritage Park, built on the ruins of the Valley Falls Company mill.

Lonsdale Drive-In Theater, Blackstone Canal, Captain Wilbur Kelly House, Ashton Viaduct Bridge, Blackstone River Bikeway, India Point Park, Independence Park, east bay bike path, Fort Hill, Providence and Bristol Railroad, Brickyard Pond, Massasoit’s Sowams, Historic downtown Warren, Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s Environmental Education Center, Colt State Park, Flat River Reservoir, Pawtuxet River, Gen. Nathaniel Greene, Bradford Soap Works, truss-style railroad bridge, Sundae’s, Tongue Pond, Washington Secondary Bike Path, South County Bike Path, Tri-Pond Park, Kingstown Road, Riverside Cemetery, Rhody Joe’s, John H. Chafee National Wildlife Refuge, Saugatucket River

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