Let’s Discuss the Offroad Landscape and Offroad Trails in Rhode Island.

Just to be clear, this article covers Jeep trails, OHV trails, truck/SUV trails, and four wheeling trails in Rhode Island.  From here on out, to keep things simple let’s just refer to all these trails as 4×4 offroad trails.

AsI am sure the residents of Rhode Island know, there unfortunately are not very many places to go offroading nor are there a good deal of offroad trails. The state of Rhode Island itself has plenty of natural parks and wildlife management areas, but they sadly do not allow offroading. The owners of Where2Wheel understand this pain being that we ourselves are east coasters and live in Virginia, where offroading and 4×4 offroad trails are few and far between. It is one of our goals to help the offroad community and more specifically the offroad community east of the Mississippi with accurate and up-to-date 4×4 trail information. With that being said, if you know of any other offroading trails in Rhode Island that are not included below, please feel free to help us east coasters out and add the trail listing to our 4×4 trails map – it is free to view/use and register. 

Now that all that boring stuff is out of the way, lets get to the offroad trail information for RI that we do have on our trails map, which can be viewed at www.where2wheel.com/trails. We have one offroad 4×4 trail listing located near Charlestown, RI and the Ninigret Conservation Area called East Beach Sand Trail. A screenshot of the trail listing from the Where2Wheel trails map is included below for better reference and so you can see the lat and long coordinates. This write-up will give a brief overview of the trail below, but you can read the full trail description here. 

The East Beach Sand Trail is, as the name mentions, located on East State Beach in Charlestown. It is approx. 3 miles of prime beach offroad trail riding and is also the easterly extension of Quonochontaug Neck. This beach is one of the least developed beaches in Rhode Island, which makes it prime for offroaders and offoad trail rides, as long as you follow all the rules laid out by Rhode Island Parks department. You can find all those guidelines along with other important information about the East Beach offroad trail here, but a few important ones worth mentioning are 1.) Vehicles driving on East Beach require a Barrier Beach Pass so make sure to purchase that before heading out to hit the trail, and 2.) During the summer season, all vehicles using the East Beach Sand Trail will be charged a beach parking fee unless registered for a campsite on East Beach. So if you like camping along with hitting the offroad trails, then it would be smart to combine them for this particular trail and save yourself the beach parking charge during the summer. 

A few more items worth mentioning is that while East Beach might be the most undeveloped beach in RI, it still has 20 camp sites along with toilets and there is also access to the beach for swimming.  So along with offroading and the East Beach Sand Offroad Trail, East Beach has other activities for a family outting and camping adventure. While the state of Rhode Island itself is lacking in offroad trails, this particular 4×4 trail is said to have some of the best views of Rhode Island’s spectacular seaside treasures, so at least when RI does it, they do it right! 

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On a side note, if you are willing to drive to hit the 4×4 trails, then there is good news for you yet as Connecticut right next door has several offroad trails located in Cockaponset State Forest, just north of Chester, CT which is about an hour and a half drive from Providence, RI. The Where2Wheel map currently has nine offroad trail listings in Connecticut and seven of those 4×4 trails are just over an hour and a half away from Providence. 

That about sums up the offroad trails and offroading landscape in Rhode Island. As mentioned above below is a screenshot of the East Beach Sand Trail location and a quick trail description. As stated above, to view more information on this particular offroad trail and to find other 4×4 trails across the country visit the W2W trails map! 

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