Providence Councilman Seth Yurdin views the monument that marks Roger Williams’ landing point in Rhode Island.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — It could have been Rhode Island’s Plymouth Rock. If only it hadn’t been accidentally dynamited 130 years ago.

Off Gano Street in Fox Point there is a weathered, solitary monument in Slate Rock Park that serves as the one nod to the founding moment of the Rhode Island colony.

“The Landing Place of Roger Williams,” the monument reads. On one side, a plaque states that Williams first crossed the Seekonk River and landed at that site, atop a ledge called Slate Rock, in 1636. The other three sides of the monument are barren, with large holes where other plaques have been ripped out.

Despite its name, there is no slate or rock of any sort to be seen in Slate Rock Park. Unfortunately, in 1877, Slate Rock itself was mistakenly blown up, by city workers trying to uncover more of the rock and preserve the symbol of Williams’ arrival, according to Parks Department Deputy Supt. Robert McMahon.

Since then, it’s been pretty much all downhill for the spot where Roger Williams first set foot in Rhode Island.

For a time, the site achieved some prominence; until roughly 1990, it was listed on Rhode Island tourism maps, and tour buses brought visitors. But plaques detailing the history of the site were removed in 1996 after they were vandalized, and since then the park, at Roger and Williams streets and fronting Gano Street, has been little used and its historic elements largely forgotten outside the neighborhood. Neighbors say it’s a frequent site for drug deals.

Now the city is putting $85,000 into redoing the park, planning to restore the plaques, improve the landscaping and the lighting, and put wrought-iron fencing around the entire park.

The hope is that emphasizing the historic elements and showing a commitment to the park can help to improve the entire area, and may even get the park back on the historic map.

“It’s to make the park a little more people-friendly,” said Councilman Seth Yurdin, who represents the area. “If teachers want to do field trips and things like that, it’s certainly better to go to a place that has plaques and information than one that’s bare.”

The story of Williams is well known locally. Banished from the Puritan colony of Massachusetts, he went south, where he would establish the colony of Rhode Island, a place where the principles of religious liberty would be respected and people would be free to believe or not believe, without any sanctions from the government.

According to the legend, Williams traveled down to Seekonk, where the local tribes told him he was still in the Massachusetts Colony, and that he must cross the river to reach free land.

When he crossed the Seekonk River and landed on a large ledge of slate rock, in Fox Point, the legend has it that he was greeted by local Narragansetts, one of whom uttered an amalgamated greeting in English and Narragansett: “What cheer, netop.”

The Narragansetts then told Williams to keep going down the Seekonk River and to round Fox Point until he found a cove, where he would find a good spot for the colony that would eventually become Providence.

The spot where Williams landed became known as Slate Rock Park, and later known as Roger Williams Landing. But it’s not altogether surprising that the site has fallen into the dustbin of history.

First, the location is deceptive as a landing site — it’s hundreds of feet from the water. That’s because most of the land between the monument and the Seekonk River is fill, dating to 1828, when the city built Gano Street. In 1636, the river came right up to the monument site.

The tragicomic destruction of Slate Rock surely hasn’t helped either. “In an effort to try and expose some of the ledge, it was dynamited and accidentally destroyed,” said Councilman Yurdin.

Some small ceremonial chunks of Slate Rock are still scattered around the city. One chunk is in the pedestal supporting a statue of the Brown University bear at the Waterman Gates.

But the park does have the monument itself, designed by Frank Foster Tingley and sculptor E.C. Codman and cast at the Gorham Foundry in 1906, according to the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission. It was a gift to the city from the Providence Association of Merchants and Manufacturers, and long bore four bronze plaques telling the story of Williams’ arrival in illustrations, Williams quotes, and descriptions.

The monument, however, has also seen better days. In 1996, one of the bronze plaques was vandalized and effectively ruined, and the other three were removed. For the last 10 years, they have sat in Parks Department storage. And its pedestal-like design and general disrepair causes many neighbors and passerby to think that there was once a statue of Williams on the top of the monument.

“The statue’s gone, torn down or destroyed or taken down, who knows,” said park neighbor Karl Schaeffer.

According to the Parks Department, no statue ever stood on the monument.

The park, Schaeffer said, is now used mostly by people walking their dogs during the day, and by locals consummating drug deals at night. Any change would be welcome, he said.

“It’s sad, really. It’s generally used for drug deals. All that’s there is a desecrated monument,” Schaeffer said.

Councilman Yurdin said that the city’s investment in the park, and playing up its historical angle, might help to combat that. “The more that people use the public spaces and parks, the less that kind of activity goes on,” Yurdin said.

The three surviving bronze plaques are at a foundry undergoing refurbishment. They’ll be reattached to the monument in the spring, when the fencing and landscaping work will begin. A new plaque with a Williams quote will replace the ruined fourth plaque. Parks Supt. Alix Ogden said the city isn’t fearful that vandals will again ruin the plaques.

Part of it, she said, is her belief that the investment the city is making in the park shows that it cares. Show residents that you care about their environment, Ogden said, and they will take pride in it as well.

Besides, “We can’t be crippled by what people might do,” she said.

dbarbari@projo.com