Frank Kosiba mows his lawn at his home on Niantic Trail.

Before it became a town in its own right in 1741, West Greenwich was known as the “vacant lands” to the west of East Greenwich.

But even then, the lands were hardly vacant. Abundant fish and wildlife made West Greenwich a prized hunting area for the Narragansett Indians. And the quiet, natural beauty of the town is still prized by residents today.

Wickaboxet, an area in the western part of town, near the Connecticut border, seems even more rural.

“It’s not en route to anything,” said Dean Saglio, a real estate agent with RE/MAX Coast and Country, who has a listing in the neighborhood. “It’s as isolated a place as you can get in Rhode Island.”

He joked that “you have to drive about five miles to get to the middle of nowhere.” In fact, in nearby Exeter, you’ll find the Middle of Nowhere Diner. Wickaboxet is just north of the Arcadia Wildlife Management Area, 13,817 acres of protected lands in the towns of West Greenwich, Exeter, Hopkinton and Richmond.

The Wickaboxet Camp Association, which owns land around tiny Bailey Pond, was originally a community of summer homes, many of which have been winterized and expanded over the years and are now used as year-round residences.

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The association, which has its own private beach and charges members $50 a year in dues, started out as a “little summer camp” in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, Saglio said.

In this neighborhood, it’s not uncommon to see horses and cows grazing in open fields. At one house, a pig was rooting around underneath the front porch.

Leyden’s Tree Farm, which is known as the Field of Screams in the weeks before Halloween, before Christmas tree tagging begins on Nov. 3, and the Stepping Stone Ranch, an equestrian center, are some of the best-known businesses in the area.

The cottage Saglio has listed — asking price $199,900 — was built in 1950 and has 800 square feet of living space. Although many of the surrounding houses are larger and newer, the small cottage is not an unusual housing style for the area. Asking prices for houses listed for sale in Wickaboxet this month ranged from $89,900 for a 728-square-foot cottage near Bailey Pond — the house was described as a “complete rehab project” or teardown candidate — on “a large lot,” to $429,900 for a four-bedroom, 2 ½ bath Colonial built in 1999 on 2 acres.

Saglio said the lakes, rivers and ponds in this part of Rhode Island were popular summer home locations before Route 95 made the south coast of Rhode Island more accessible. “When Route 95 came in … a lot of these lake properties were kind of forgotten,” he said.

But increased prices for Rhode Island’s oceanfront properties have sparked a renewed interest in lake properties, he said.

Still, Saglio said, western West Greenwich is really a place for people who are comfortable with the sounds of silence. “You can drive for 20 minutes [from Providence] and really feel like you got to someplace really isolated,” he said. “You feel like you’re in Maine.”

cdunn@projo.com