Kathleen Connell and her dog, Cole, run along Tuckerman Avenue off Purgatory Road.

Middletown on Aquidneck Island is often overshadowed by Newport, its showy neighbor to the south, but there is a reason that one of the roads leading to Middletown’s Second Beach is called Paradise Avenue.

This neighborhood’s natural beauty, and the trails at the wildlife refuge at nearby Sachuest Point, make it a favorite spot for walkers and naturalists.

Second Beach and Third Beach are in Middletown; their neighbor, First Beach, is in Newport. And opinions as to which beach is the finest can be a source of lively debate on the island.

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Like so many of Rhode Island’s coastal hideaways, Second Beach is increasingly being colonized by large vacation homes, but this Middletown neighborhood still has a variety of housing styles, from humble trailers to multimillion-dollar estates.

But the neighborhood’s most notable landmark remains the Gothic Revival chapel at St. George’s School, a private boarding school on 125 hilltop acres overlooking Second Beach. The chapel was built in 1918, the gift of John Nicholas Brown, an alum who was still a college student when he decided to commission the building.

St. George’s was founded by the Rev. John Byron Diman as an Episcopal school for boys in 1896 in Newport, but the school moved to Middletown in 1901, according to school historian Jack Doll. Today St. George’s has about 350 students from 30 states and 20 countries. Most students board there, though some live off campus. The school began admitting girls in 1972.

At one time, Doll said, the school owned almost all of the land surrounding Second and Third beaches, including Sachuest Point.

Doll said the land at Sachuest Point was sold to the government around 1940 for military purposes, and in the early years of World War II, it was used for coastal defense. St. George’s founder, Rev. Diman, later became a Catholic priest, served in the Red Cross during World War I, and he went on to found a Catholic school, Portsmouth Priory, in Portsmouth, and the Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School in Fall River, Mass., according to Doll.

Christina Utz lives in an 1870 farmhouse on Paradise Avenue called Grey Ledge Farm. She and her husband, John Utz, bought the house in 1999. She said her husband used to be in the Navy and was stationed in Middletown, and that introduced them to the area. Paradise Valley used to be primarily agricultural, and at one point was “the bread basket of Aquidneck Island,” according to John Utz. A stone marker near the beach end of Paradise Avenue reads “Easton Farm 1640.”

Christina Utz, who runs a landscaping service, said that once people start to live year-round on Aquidneck Island, it takes a lot to get them to leave. “We don’t like to cross the bridges,” she said. And there are other unspoken rules on the island, she said. One is that “you have to have a dog.” Another is that owning a pickup truck is a badge of honor. “I don’t have a truck yet, but I’m working on it,” she said.

John Utz said that property values near Second Beach are high, and have become astronomical for the houses and land closest to the beach. Utz has become a real estate agent since leaving the Navy, and he is selling a 1.67-acre parcel next to his property on Paradise Avenue for “about a million dollars.” House prices in the neighborhood start in the 400s for modest houses on the streets farthest from the beach, and go up into the millions.

Earlier this year, actor Nicolas Cage bought a mansion at 75 Gray Craig Rd., a private road that leads to a hilltop haven overlooking the Norman Bird Sanctuary, for $15.7 million. A house at 432 Paradise Ave. sold for $695,000 in September, and one at 321 Tuckerman Ave. sold for $2 million in July.

“We’re a destination,” Utz said. “It’s not subsistence housing. It’s a second-home market.”

cdunn@projo.com