12.20.99
The West Bay Century -- 100 Years of Highlights

• 1900
  The trolley lines are completed in the West Bay.
  
  The census shows the following populations: Cranston 13,343, Coventry 5,279, East Greenwich 2,775, and West Greenwich 606. Warwick has 21,316 residents, including the western section of the city that would eventually become West Warwick.
  
  
• 1913
  West Warwick becomes the state's 39th and last municipality. West Warwick gets the high school and Warwick the town hall.
  
  
• 1915
  Fire destroys most of the Rhodes-On-Pawtuxet entertainment complex in Cranston. Rebuilt, it reopens a year later.
  
  
• 1920
  Prohibition begins. Warwick and West Warwick become "wide open,'' Burlesque shows abound. In West Warwick back-room gambling and illegal slot machines are easily found. The Warwick shoreline becomes a rumrunner's paradise.
  
  
• 1926
  After a 30-year run, the grandstand of Narragansett Park burns to the ground. Located where Stebbins Field (Cranston Stadium) is today, the one-mile oval was the first auto-racing track in the country.
  
  
• 1927
  The Goddard family donates 214 acres of land for a state park. It later becomes Goddard Memorial State Park.
  
  
• 1931
  Warwick becomes Rhode Island's seventh city.
  
  
• 1932
  The first state-owned airport in the nation is dedicated in the Hillsgrove section of Warwick. In the beginning it is merely a graded dirt runway with a few crude auxiliary buildings.
  
  
• 1938
  The Great Gale strikes the West Bay. The shoreline is devastated from Edgewood to East Greenwich. Numerous seashore landmarks disappear forever.
  
  
• Early 1940s
  The Kaiser-Walsh Shipyard on the Providence Cranston line employs thousands in the most visible sign of the war effort.
  
  
• 1943
  The town of East Greenwich buys the former East Greenwich Academy and enters the world of public secondary education for the first time.
  
  
• 1948
  Rocky Point reopens after a 10-year hiatus caused by the Hurricane of '38' and World War II. The traffic jam on opening day extends from the park's entrance to the city line of Cranston and Providence.
  
  Nazarene Melocarro begins building Garden City off Reservoir Avenue in Cranston. This 223-acre development on the site of a former graphite mine comes to include apartments and 700 residential homes that are snapped up by the returning veterans with growing families. Houses can be bought for as little as $10 down.
  
  
• 1951
  Kent County Memorial Hospital on Toll Gate Road opens its doors.
  
  
• 1954
  Telephone direct dialing comes to Warwick. No longer is the phrase, "Number please,'' heard from the operators of the Bayview or Greenwood exchanges. The new name of the city's exchange is Regent.
  
  Another hurricane -- this time it had a name Carol -- devastates the West Bay area.
  
  
• 1955
  The Warwick Musical Theatre opens under a circus tent in Warwick. At first offering Broadway shows and later top line entertainers the tent was converted into a permanent structure in 1967.
  
  
• 1956
  Discount shopping comes to the West Bay in the form of the Warwick Shoppers World on Warwick Avenue. Advertisements for the grand opening proclaim a "5-cent riot'' and that is exactly what occurs as shoppers literally have fistfights to get to merchandise.
  
  The West Bay's first radio station, WWRI in West Warwick, begins broadcasting.
  
  
• 1962
  Rhode Island's first McDonald's appears in the Greenwood section of Warwick.
  
  
• 1965
  The Beach Boys perform to a sell-out crowd of 1,000 teens at Rhodes On The Pawtuxet in Cranston. A ticket costs $5.
  
  The first Gaspee Days events are held in Cranston and Warwick.
  
  
• 1967
  The Midland Mall (now the Rhode Island Mall) opens. Shortly afterward the Warwick Mall begins to take shape. Warwick becomes the retail capital of our state, ending much of the commercial life of the Arctic section of West Warwick.
  
  
• 1969
  The former Apponaug Mill Complex in Warwick burns.
  
  
• 1972
  Rhode Island Junior College (now the Community College of Rhode Island) moves into its new $11-million megastructure on the former Knight estate, near the malls.
  
  
• 1976
  The Showboat, a landmark of the Coventry landscape for decades, is destroyed by fire.
  
  
• 1978
  The Great Blizzard hits the West Bay. Many residents remain snowbound for days.
  
  
• 1980
  The Twin Oaks Restaurant, an icon on the shores of Spectacle Pond in Cranston since the '30s, is severely damaged by fire. After 6 months in temporary quarters on Oaklawn Avenue, the restaurant reopens in the same location.
  
  
• 1981
  The Narragansett Brewery ships out its last bottles
  and kegs.
  
  
• 1986
  The silver screen of the East Greenwich's Hill Top Drive-in goes dark forever.
  
  
• 1990
  The 1990 census puts the combined population of the West Bay at 206,112, a 476 percent increase from 1990.
  
  
• 1994
  The Cranston volunteer fire companies of Pawtuxet, Fiskville, Oaklawn and Meshanticut will no longer answer the alarm of fire. The city administration decides that the full-time Fire Department can provide adequate coverage.
  
  
• 1996
  An auction is held at Rocky Point to sell off the major rides.
  
  
• 1999
  The Majestic Theater in West Warwick falls to the wrecking ball.
  
  Sen. John H. Chafee, a long-time Warwick resident, dies at age 77.
  

A yearlong Providence Journal series about life in Rhode Island.
Produced in cooperation with the Rhode Island Historical Society.