on the Cliff Walk by Salve Regina

This past Spring, with an old friend, on the Cliff Walk.......by Salve Regina......."The best place to walk.......Year'round "............especially with a friend.....



Local historians suggest that the first established paths along the Cliff Walk shore line were outlined by the local deer ... then the Narragansett Indians ... followed by the colonials who harvested whatever they could including the random salvage floating ashore from ship wrecks.



During the last half of the 1800s, the summer getaway for the wealthy New Yorkers spread from the center of Newport's harbor area to this then undeveloped coastal shoreline. The city was a fantastic center of Victorian extravagance in architecture and the social competition of millionaires benefiting from the industrial revolution. Many of the great mansions built during those times were ideally located on this scenic overlook of the Rhode Island Sound and Atlantic Ocean. Serious development of Cliff Walk started about 1880 and a number of the estate owners spent the next 50 years (to about 1929) improving the walk piece by piece.



The Great Depression threw the walk development into the deep freeze. Over the last 150 years the public and some of the wealthy estate owners have often clashed over access rights both along the shore and to the shore. Even today there are disputes at several points both along the walk and at public access points. Owners at times have moved paths to more dangerous areas; erected walls, fences and boulders directly across the Walk; planted bushes and trees to block or discourage access to the Walk; and posted dogs and even bulls to scare people away. Cliff Walk was protected by the combination of long term public use, the "Fisherman's Rights" granted by the Colonial Charter of King Charles II, and a passage in the Rhode Island Constitution that granted the public "rights of fishery and the privileges of the shore to which they have heretofore been entitled."



Now centuries of prior use have guaranteed the legal right of people to walk on the cliffs. The walk's construction was originally just a path along the shoreline. In some areas the public moved a few stones aside, some owners neatened their portions of the walk, while others built tunnels or bridges in a public spirited move to make the walk enjoyable to all.



In effect the walk is a public right of way over private property owned by the waterfront property owners. The walk historically was really a path or trail with many rustic components.