A runner makes his way along the Commons in Little Compton. There are 41 houses listed for sale last week in Little Compton, ranging in asking price from $380,000 to $11,300,000 (for a small house that “needs work” on a parcel that could yield five house lots). The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

The Commons, the town center of Little Compton, has all the elements of an idyllic Vermont village, except that tourists don’t come here in the winter to ski — they come in the summer to be near the water.

But the town is a community apart from the tourists and summer residents, and many of the establishments and institutions that make Little Compton a community are in the Commons.

There are the Town Hall, the post office, the Brownell library, the senior center and the community center. There is the Thursday Thrift Shop, open Thursdays and Saturdays from 10 to 3, and the Art CafÉ, which sells coffee, tea, art and furniture.

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There is the local restaurant, Commons Lunch, that serves traditional Rhode Island fare such as jonnycakes and quahog chowder, and the rambling general store, Wilbur’s, which sells groceries, newspapers, magazines, books, gifts, toys, housewares and gardening supplies. There is the town’s only public school, the Wilbur-McMahon School, which serves children in kindergarten through grade eight. [The town sends its high school students to Portsmouth High School.]

But the Commons, in true New England style, is dominated by a tall white church, the United Congregational Church, and a historic cemetery, the Old Commons Burial Ground.

A gravestone in the cemetery marks the resting place of “Elisabeth Paebodie, daughter of the Plymouth Pilgrims John Alden and Priscilla Mullin, the first white woman born in New England.” Paebodie was born to a couple who traveled to America aboard the Mayflower.

Mimi Whitmarsh, a local real estate agent, is a Little Compton native who lives about a mile from her office in the Commons. She said she has left town for several long periods, to go to boarding school and to college, and to further her career, “but I always end up back here.”

Little Compton’s rural charm and emphasis on conservation means residents must do without some services and travel out of town for others. There is no municipal water, sewer or trash pickup service in Little Compton, and a lot of shopping is done in nearby Massachusetts communities such as Westport and Fall River, Whitmarsh said. But she said people often pick up items for friends when they travel out of town.

Renting houses in the summer is a steady part of business for all the local real estate agencies, she said, but selling real estate in pricey Little Compton is the more profitable activity.

There were 41 houses listed for sale last week in Little Compton, ranging in asking price from $380,000 to $11,300,000 (for a small house that “needs work” on a large parcel that could yield five house lots). Eleven of the 41 listings have prices at $1 million or above.

There are only three houses listed for sale in the Commons: a four-bedroom ranch built in 1960, with six rooms and 1,597 square feet of living space (asking price $580,000); a five-bedroom Victorian, built in 1876, with central air conditioning and a granite kitchen, on 2 acres, with a two-story barn (asking price $769,000); and a three-bedroom Cape Cod built in 1940 on “a stone-walled 1.23-acre yard with apple orchard” (asking price $850,000).

Little Compton has one of the lowest property-tax rates in Rhode Island, but real estate purchases in town are subject to a one-time conservation tax.

cdunn@projo.com