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Rhode Island Oddities

Unusual destinations, curious landmarks, and worthwhile detours across Rhode Island.

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8 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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Roadside Attractions

Ninigret Park Trolls

Charlestown, Rhode Island

Two enormous trolls made from reclaimed wood sit among ponds, boulders, and trees inside Ninigret Park, turning a public recreation area into a giant scavenger hunt.

Historic Oddities

Newport Tower

Newport, Rhode Island

An old circular stone tower stands on eight arches in a Newport park, surrounded by centuries of arguments about exactly when it was built and what…

Roadside Attractions

Green Animals Topiary Garden

Portsmouth, Rhode Island

More than eighty topiary animals and figures fill a seven-acre estate where shrubs have been trained into bears, birds, a giraffe, a camel, a unicorn, and…

Historic Oddities

Crook Point Bridge

Providence, Rhode Island

A steel railroad drawbridge has remained raised above the Seekonk River since train service ended in 1976, leaving a giant piece of transportation machinery frozen against…

Giant Objects

Big Blue Bug

Providence, Rhode Island

A four-thousand-pound termite stretches fifty-eight feet across the roof of a pest-control company, greeting Interstate 95 traffic with six enormous legs and a permanently cheerful blue…

Historic Oddities

Mercy Brown’s Grave

Exeter, Rhode Island

A small rural grave marks the young woman whose body was exhumed in 1892 during one of New England's last documented vampire panics.

Roadside Attractions

Gun Totem

Providence, Rhode Island

Rough concrete has been chipped away from a twelve-foot obelisk to reveal the metal forms of one thousand disabled handguns embedded inside it.

Curious Landmarks

The Milk Can

North Smithfield, Rhode Island

A roadside ice-cream stand was built as a thirty-two-foot milk can, creating a piece of novelty architecture that has outlived the business inside it by decades.