Land Use & Economy

Land use patterns and economies of the Greenwich Bay watershed are the products of people's interactions with the bay and their dependence on its resources.

Pre-colonial and colonial economic practices

The Narragansett Indians "coined" shell money, or wampum, and often used the currency to obtain goods such as metals and stone from other North American tribes. "The Narragansett Indians would primarily barter or trade for items, but when you didn't have anything to barter or trade, that's when the shell money was brought in," says Ella Sekatau, Narragansett Indian Tribe ethno-historian and elder medicine woman, who was interviewed for Greenwich Bay projects in 1993 and 2003.

Basic needs for food and safe water travel drove Indians and European settlers alike to live and farm near the bay, and the Narragansetts played a major role in shaping colonial settlements in the 1600s. Colonists secured land from the Indians, but the transactions were typically fraught with mistrust and uneasy alliances complicated by inner fractures within tribes and settler groups. Tensions between the Indians and the settlers ebbed and flowed, but worsened as the Narragansetts lost more land and environmental assets. The colonists, said Sekatau in 1993, failed to respect the Indians' ecological practices that were critical for maintaining environmental balance in the bay area. "They could not understand the undergrowth burning, the practices of planting crops, or the benefits of not defiling the waters. The colonists did not understand that the moving of habitats periodically placed minimum demands on the ecosystems…The colonists had a different understanding of labor and wealth," and thus, "the goal was to make the areas look like what they had left behind in Europe," Sekatau said.

After King Philip's War, the bloody battle between the colonists and Native American tribes fought from 1675 to 1676, the land that became East Greenwich was deeded to soldiers who had fought in the war. The Rhode Island General Assembly recognized the need to settle new communities in close proximity to the bay, and encouraged their development. In time, waterfront villages grew as shipping, shellfishing, and manufacturing industries created jobs and a niche for bay communities in the world market.

The growth of bayside villages

Together, shipping, including the slave trade, travel, shellfishing, and manufacturing accelerated growth of bustling bayside villages from the late 1700s through the early 1900s.

Federal embargoes, the War of 1812, and the arrival of the railroad dampened business at the shipping ports, but manufacturing, especially textiles, and shellfishing prospered from the late 1770s through the early 1900s. Tanneries, clothmakers, fulling mills, fabric printers, cotton mills, and shipbuilders were among the manufacturing firms that grew in East Greenwich and Warwick and provided jobs for residents, including immigrants from Ireland, Sweden, and Italy.

The birth of suburbia

Until Prohibition was repealed in 1933, liquor-smuggling aboard ships such as the notoriously evasive East Greenwich-based Black Duck made fortunes for its practitioners. As waterfront businesses—legal and otherwise—declined, manufacturing grew to drive the economy in East Greenwich and Warwick, increasing land use. Large-scale consumption of land for residential and commercial expansion escalated significantly after World War II. This slow but steady conversion of commercial and subsistence farms to post-war suburban neighborhoods, yielded patchwork development that prompted local government to create zoning laws. While fledgling ordinances addressed development in new residential and business areas, they did little to protect older villages, shorelines, and farmland.

Development & the economy today

Today, communities have taken steps to be more selective in assigning land uses and choosing development projects, and have also invested in open space purchases totaling several hundred acres since 1987 and have introduced new development regulations to protect the environment and prevent development.

Today, Greenwich Bay shellfishing contributes roughly $4 million annually to Rhode Island's economy. Marinas along Greenwich Bay are also significant economic contributors, along with other marine-based businesses. Keeping these businesses thriving is important not only to the business community but also to Warwick, East Greenwich, and the state. Government leaders are working to balance economic vitality, community development and natural resource protection for Greenwich Bay. Elements include marine-based industries such as recreational boating and fishing, waterfront tourism, boat building and outfitting, shipbuilding, fishing, aquaculture, and marine transportation. The Rhode Island Economic Policy Council is promoting the long-term, responsible use of Narragansett Bay resources, and the Rhode Island Senate and House policy offices are working together to help local communities build a marine business cluster that creates jobs and revenues while protecting natural resources.