Newport County, RI

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Long before European arrival, the area now known as Newport County was home to the Narragansett people, who used the coastal islands and mainland for seasonal fishing and farming. The first English settlers arrived in 1639, founding Newport on Aquidneck Island as a haven for religious dissenters from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By the mid-1700s, Newport had grown into one of the busiest ports in colonial America, its wealth built on triangular trade—rum, molasses, and enslaved Africans. A significant Black population, both free and enslaved, lived in Newport and Portsmouth during this era, with the city becoming a center of the early abolitionist movement by the 1780s.

The Revolutionary War devastated Newport’s economy; the British occupied the town from 1776 to 1779, and much of the merchant class fled. Recovery came slowly, but by the 1820s, a new wave of Irish immigrants arrived to build Fort Adams in Newport and work in the growing textile mills of Middletown and Tiverton. The Irish settled densely in the Fifth Ward of Newport and in mill villages along the Sakonnet River. The 1840s Potato Famine brought a second, larger wave of Irish, who formed the backbone of the county’s labor force for generations.

Portuguese immigrants from the Azores and Cape Verde began arriving in the 1870s, drawn by the whaling and fishing industries centered in Newport and Little Compton. By 1900, Portuguese was the second most spoken language in the county after English, and Portuguese fishing families established tight-knit communities along Thames Street in Newport and in the coastal villages of Jamestown on Conanicut Island. Italian immigrants followed in the 1890s-1910s, settling in Newport’s lower Broadway area and working as stonemasons, fishermen, and laborers on the Gilded Age mansions being built along Bellevue Avenue.

The U.S. Navy became the dominant economic force in the early 20th century. The Naval War College opened in Newport in 1884, and the Naval Torpedo Station on Goat Island expanded massively during World War I and World War II, drawing thousands of sailors and civilian workers from across the country. This military presence brought a transient, more diverse population to the county, though most service members did not settle permanently. The construction of the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge (completed 1969) connected Aquidneck Island to Jamestown and the mainland, accelerating suburban development in Middletown and Portsmouth as bedroom communities for Navy personnel and commuters to Providence and Boston.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act had a muted effect on Newport County compared to urban centers, but it did reshape the population in specific ways. The county’s foreign-born share remains low at 2.9%, but the composition shifted. Portuguese immigration continued through the 1970s, with families from the Azores settling in Newport’s East End and Middletown. A smaller wave of Brazilian immigrants arrived in the 1990s and 2000s, working in landscaping, cleaning, and the service industry tied to tourism. Today, the Hispanic population stands at 6.6%, with many families concentrated in Newport’s lower-income neighborhoods and in Middletown’s apartment complexes near the naval base.

The most dramatic demographic change since 1965 has been the decline of the Navy presence. The base closures of the 1970s—particularly the 1973 closure of the Naval Torpedo Station—cost the county thousands of jobs and residents. The population of Newport city fell from 34,562 in 1970 to 24,672 by 2020. In response, the county pivoted to tourism and second-home development. Wealthy buyers from New York, Boston, and Connecticut purchased the Gilded Age mansions and built new estates in Little Compton and Jamestown, driving up property values and pushing out working-class families. The Black population, which had been 8.5% in 1970, declined to 3.4% by 2020 as housing costs rose and the Navy’s African American workforce left.

Suburbanization reshaped the county’s geography. Middletown grew from a rural farming town into the county’s commercial hub, with strip malls, chain restaurants, and the largest concentration of rental housing. Portsmouth became a commuter suburb for Providence and Boston, its population rising from 8,000 in 1960 to 17,000 by 2020. Tiverton and Little Compton remained more rural, attracting retirees and second-home owners seeking coastal quiet. The East/Southeast Asian population (1.3%) and Indian subcontinent population (0.5%) are small but growing, concentrated among professionals working at the Naval War College, Newport Hospital, and the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus in Narragansett (Washington County, but adjacent).