Block Island Family Vacations

You can hardly call Block Island "undiscovered" -- thousands of tourists disembark there every year to explore the tiny island off the Rhode Island coast between Montauk and Martha's Vineyard. And yet, first-time visitors to the island are constantly amazed at how undeveloped the island has remained -- especially compared to the Vineyard, Long Island or even Nantucket. It has been left largely in its pristine state, thanks to the efforts of some forward-thinking conservationists who sought to maintain the island's unique brand of beauty several decades ago. They began blocking off vast tracts of meadow, beach and farmland, with the result that now nearly half of the island is preserved land.

And what a land it is! Block Island is unique on the East Coast for its towering bluffs, cast up by the glaciers thousands of years ago and now slowly eroding in a long dance with wind and weather. The shoals surrounding the island denied settlers a safe harbor for hundreds of years, causing the island to remain an isolated farming community until the late 1800s. That's when it experienced its first boom of tourism; suddenly discovered by Victorian tourists of means, it was dubbed "Bermuda of the North" and saw the rise of dozens of grand hotels laden with turrets and mansard roofs. Even after the boom died down, however, the hotels remained, frozen in time for decades even as similar hotels burned or were demolished elsewhere in New England.

Nowadays, the island is a supremely picturesque landscape of clay bluffs and stone walls, quaint cottages and grand Victorian architecture packed within an island a mere 10 square miles in area. The majority of hotels, restaurants and shops are clustered around the twin population centers of Old Harbor and New Harbor -- outside of them, there are only miles of scenic roads bordered by stone walls and wide-open views. For families, the island offers a laid-back respite from the go-karts and mini-golf of other beachside vacation destinations. Within 48 hours, visitors settle into the rhythm of the sun and the waves, meandering bike rides or kayak paddles in Great Salt Pond. Despite the crush of tourists at the ferry terminal or the occasional rowdiness of the yachting crowd at the island's few local nightclubs, the overriding atmosphere on the island is low-key and unhurried, with all ages and incomes welcomed without prejudice or pretention. If that sounds like the ticket to you, this may be the ideal place to slow down the pace of life for a week and reconnect with the family.