The Arch

Photo by Mark Thompson

The Rocky Point Arch is an iconic symbol of the park. The sixty-foot parabola was one of eleven “Peace Through Understanding” archways sponsored by General Foods during the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and for years, it remained a mystery as to how it ended up at a little amusement park in Rhode Island. Sleuths eventually discovered the truth: Then co-owner Vincent Ferla brought it to the park in three pieces and installed it in time for the 1966 season. 

During the world’s fair, it served as a meeting point for attendees, along with the ten other arches on the fairgrounds site. Now it faces Narragansett Bay, almost in the same spot where steamships and ferries unloaded excited passengers in the 1800s and early 1900s.

It’s one of the last remaining vestiges of the park, along with the Skyliner’s towers, and still serves as a meeting point of sorts. Only today’s visitors aren’t here for the chowder and clam cakes and rides on the Corkscrew: They come for the rugged shore, the salt-sprayed breezes and the wide-open grassy expanses. And yes, they come to reminisce about the good times they had at the amusement park they thought would last forever.

For hundreds of years, people have been drawn to this rocky outcropping in Warwick Neck. Hurricanes have flayed buildings and heavy equipment has clawed down rides, but generations of Rhode Islanders — many of whom never rode the Musik Express or tore down the Flume — are now able to come with their family, and their friends, to this tranquil spot by the sea for years to come (takeout chowder and clam cakes optional, but highly encouraged).