The Little Rhody Governor's Park

Where hiking is a side dish...for now

As far as I can tell, there are two proven ways to get a park named after you. If you’re rich, you can donate some land to a state, with the condition that the land be turned into a public green space. And if you’re like former Maine Governor Percival Baxter, the man who made Baxter State Park possible, you can throw in additional earmarks such as “no running water or paved roads in the park, because we’re not catering to cupcakes here!” Alternatively, if you don’t own land, you could run for public office. And if you win, you can make sure that parks get the resources they need to thrive.

Or not. Sometimes, politicians manage to endear themselves to the public to such a degree that after they die, a park is named in their honor. Because the fuzzy vibe that you get from a great park is not unlike how it felt to bump into the late politician and share a handshake, a coffee, a conversation about Medicaid reimbursements, you name it. The late John A. Notte Jr.—Rhode Island’s 65th Governor—was one of those affable legends. Perhaps best known for implementing the state’s income tax. This ultimately made him a one-term governor in 1963, but Notte still inspired a special kind of bipartisan respect from colleagues. He passed away from a terminal illness two decades after his electoral defeat, and at his funeral, Governor J. Joseph Garrahy hailed the late Notte as “a man of political courage; an honest man who worked to make Rhode Island a better and more compassionate state.” The implication was clear. “We may not have given you a second term. But we’re gonna give you a park.”

At least, that’s how I suspect Governor John Notte Memorial Park was catalyzed. A wraparound buffet of grassy picnic greens, swimming beaches, and conservation woodlands on Wenscott Reservoir in North Providence, the Governor’s Park feels designed for social cross-pollination. It’s a robust urban park with a shopping mall mindset—the promise that there’s something here for each person to enjoy or poke around, when they’re not busy catching up or grabbing a bite to eat by the fountain. And that’s not a metaphor. When you pull into the main parking lot for the Governor’s Park, you’re literally greeted by a fountain that would look right at home in the hulking Providence Place shopping center. The park fountain is located in a pool fed by a stream, and a gentle path follows the waterway uphill through a grove of shade trees. Moments later, you arrive at a gorgeous cascade, framed by an arched bridge that spans the width of the stream. Chance are, the banks of the cascade will be busy with parkgoers napping, tanning, munching, and performing jumping jacks to Bad Bunny. And you may hear the sound of ducks from nearby. Because the cascade spills from the watery heft of Wenscott Reservoir; the blue crown jewel of the Governor’s Park.

This is, note-for-note, exactly how my entrance to Governor John Notte Memorial Park played out. I found myself at the park earlier this summer, before New England turned into a rice cooker with an EXTRA STEAM setting. What lured me here? Well, if you must know, I was craving a beef kebab wrap from East Side Pockets; the delectable Mediterranean joint in Providence. And the New England Puritan in me needed another reason to justify driving to Little Rhody for the late afternoon. I soon realized that this could be an opportunity to explore a new Providence park, before grabbing an early dinner. I had found the rusting muscle cars in the forest of Neutaconkanut Hill. I had admired the Seekonk River from Blackstone Park. And I had followed the Hunt’s Mills Interpretive Trail to the onsite mill waterfall and fish ladder. But North Providence was less familiar territory for me. As soon as I saw the large splotch of green on Google Maps—the Governor’s Park—I sensed that this was the place. So I grabbed my trail runners and my broadest brimmed hat, and I headed south with rustling ambition.

And yet, as soon as I arrived at the reservoir, it became obvious that hiking in Governor John Notte Memorial Park is one of the more esoteric things you can do here. Most of my fellow parkgoers were clustered on the riverbanks. A handful were inching into the reservoir waters at Twin Rivers Beach. And just north of the beach, a banquet hall with its own pavilion was audibly thrumming with activity. I was more intrigued by the name of this banquet hall—The Overlook at Meehan. While the hall did “overlook” the reservoir to some degree, being perched on its wooded shore, I wondered if the name implied the presence of another high point in the vicinity; in the dense and snarled woodlands behind the banquet hall. So I left the more palatial side of the park behind and followed a thin, raggedy path with little blue signs that read “West River Trail.”

Sometimes there are obvious natural landmarks that inspire connective trails. But just as often, you’ll find trails that are clearly the product of someone desiring to have *a* trail in a certain location, with the destination of the trail being sort of an afterthought. “There’s a creek in the woods? Okay, fuck it. Let’s just have the trail go there.” The West River Trail is one of these trails—especially because the woodland stream to which it leads is not actually Providence’s West River. That distinction belongs to the waterway that flows from Wenscott Reservoir, toward that pool with the fountain, before flowing onward through the city. The West River Trail takes you away from its namesake river, toward a tributary that begins in the woods of Governor John Notte Memorial Park. I can appreciate the humble beginnings of any waterway and I was ready to savor the origins of this one. But before I got there, an uphill cut-off path to my left hinted at the possibility of an actual overlook with a nice reservoir vista. So I pivoted, expectingly.

What I found on the forested hilltop to which this trail led wasn’t particularly scenic, but there were glimmers of lost human activity up there. Namely, a pair of decaying archery targets suspended from trees. As I crunched through dried leaves and twigs, stepping over a few fallen trees and accepting that there would be no overlook views on this hike, I wondered if there had been another chapter in the short history of the Governor’s Park in which the woods were flush with hikers, campers, sharpshooters, you name it. Today, they feel like a forgotten sideshow, and when I doubled back to the main West River Trail route, I found myself pushing through branches that had partially obscured segments of the trail. The tributary itself was a modest trickle, and the wooden bridge over the stream was falling apart. But the presence of the bridge suggested unknown glory days; a time when more people came out here to ramble.

My exit from the Governor’s Park woodlands appeared as a set of stairs that delivered me back to the sunny parking lot from which I had set off. There were still plenty of parkgoers galivanting on the greens by the fountain and the beginnings of the West River. I felt like I was rejoining friends in the South Shore Plaza atrium, after visiting a BDSM store while they had been shopping at American Eagle. There was a sense of coming back together after exploring the mall in our own ways. As much as the trails here can feel like an undercooked side dish, they still offer something for those of us who crave the sting of thorns in our calves and the visceral satisfaction of emerging from the forest with muddy ankles. Sometimes, a nice side dish is all you’re craving.

But who knows what the Governor’s Park might taste like in the future? As I learned after my inaugural visit, the bacteria counts in Wenscott Reservoir have been getting high enough that the state of Rhode Island is recommending the closure of the Twin Rivers Beach. If that happens, what will the beachgoers do? Will they fan out and disappear into the Greater Providence parks ecosystem, like tears in rain? Will they sit on the picnic greens near the reservoir, drowning their sorrows in Fritos and Pepsi? Or could a handful of them find their way into the nearby woods? To the West River Trail?

The loss of any public swimming hole is a gut punch. But the people of Little Rhody will figure this out. Who knows what could fill the recreational void left by a beach closure? There could be more woodland trails, or a floating pool with self-filtering technology, like the one that’s being deployed to New York’s East River soon. Hell, someone might build a zipline through the forest! All I know is that when I went to Governor John Notte Memorial Park, I saw many denominations of being outdoors and loving it. I saw parkgoers of different persuasions coexisting, in harmony. And I’m sure this will endure. I’d imagine it’s what the Governor himself would have wanted.

Governor John Notte Memorial Park ramble
Hike distance: 2 miles loop
Elevation gain: 161 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map

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When it comes to hiking news, we can’t seem to get enough scatological stories. It makes sense. Being out in the sticks, distanced from the comforts of home, forces you to think about bodily functions in a more intentional way; including those of any four-legged hiking companions. For Slate, conservation specialist Jeff Dingler wrote about the absolute worst thing that you can do with dog poop when you’re out on a hike. I’m not going to reveal the answer here, but I will say that I’ve witnessed a lot of people doing this on trails lately, in the city and in the backcountry. And it’s not cool.

Also, speaking of stories involving fecal bacteria (apologies), I wrote a piece for the Boston Globe’s Ideas section on the obstacles that people will often run into when trying to find a clean, barrier-free swimming hole in Massachusetts. With summers getting hotter and heavier storms contaminating some of our swimming venues with chemical and pathogen rich runoff, it’s clear that we’re going to need more places to swim. And as I reveal in the Globe story, New York is showing us how to create them.

Finally, Aislinn Sarnacki, who writes for the Bangor Daily News while also producing a fanastic series of Maine-based “1-minute hike” videos, has a new story about one of the scariest and most iconic hikes in the Pine Tree State: the infamous Knife Edge ridgeline ascent on Mount Katahdin. (I’m actually less scared of the rugged, narrow ridge path and more freaked out by the chimney-like gap that you have to climb into and out of, during the traverse.) Sarnacki’s story is also a helpful reminder that we’re about one month away from Katahdin’s trails closing for the winter. Learn more here.