Block Island (Washington County, RI)

Welcome to Block Island ...

Although we found mention of Block Island during our research, we have little information about it.<1> Given the context of how Block Island was mentioned, we believe that it was a community rather than a locale or some type of landmark. We have done a cursory search and if it was a community, we haven't been able to find any evidence that it still exists..

While we are confident that Block Island was located in Washington County, we don't know its actual location within the county.

We've added Block Island to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. We would especially like to find the location of Block Island - knowing its coordinates, we can explore things like its relationship to neighboring communities, nearby cemeteries, etc. If you can help us with Block Island, please Contact Us.

A typical abbreviation for Block Island: Block Is. (in Canada, 'Isld.' is the more common abbreviation.)

Time Zone: The area where we believe that Block Island might be (or was) located is in the Eastern Time Zone (EST/EDT) and observes daylight saving time

We believe that Block Island would be found within the (401) area code.

Communities Also Named Block Island ...

Using our Gazetteer, we found that there are two Rhode Island communities named Block Island: This one is located in Washington County and the other is located in Newport County.

For more information, see our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Block Island.

Off-the-Road Links ...

The official website for State of Rhode Island: https://www.ri.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>

If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer. For example, we might find a sentence like "He went south past Block Island and then turned west". While Block Island could be some kind of landmark, we think that it's more likely to be a community. We've added Block Island as a placeholder with the hope that we'll be able to add more information in the future.

Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Bird Creek to see Pete ... Bird Creek is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name.

Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time.

Also keep in mind that Block Island could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.