The Beacon reporter misunderstood my remarks about the Buttonwoods Fire District during the recent City Council public comments session.

He reported in the Feb. 27, 2025, “Resident to Council” story that I said Buttonwoods Avenue “is marked as a private community (route) in the city’s Comprehensive Plan.”

What I said, or meant to say, was that Buttonwoods Avenue is marked as a public highway in the Comprehensive Plan, a “Collector Highway.”

Many people get confused about the Buttonwoods Fire District. 

What is it? A fire district in Warwick? Is it public? Is it private? Where are the fire trucks?

When the Buttonwood Beach Association set up the Buttonwoods Fire District, it had no intention to equip its fire company with trucks and firefighters. 

It was a fire company in name only. They set it up to raise taxes to pave the streets at Buttonwoods.

They petitioned the General Assembly under a special provision of the Constitution of 1843, the organization of fire companies and military companies under Article IV, Section 17.

That section of the Constitution was set up as an answer to Dorr’s Rebellion of 1841-1842, in which disenfranchised citizens unsuccessfully attacked the state arsenal in Providence and then retreated to Burrillville. The governor’s military companies responded.

Rebellion leader Thomas Dorr’s cannon misfired and his companies of paramilitaries fled. With peace restored, a new Constitution was adopted. Newly organized military companies and fire companies were limited through Section 17 to be constrained in public service with no private purpose whatsoever. No private military companies. The fire companies were drafted into that constraint.

One century after its adoption, the Buttonwood Beach Association petitioned the General Assembly for a fire company under Section 17 – a completely public entity for the protection of the public with no private purpose. It has no powers to maintain private streets. It maintains the very public Buttonwoods Avenue for city fire trucks to pass unimpeded. 

The Beacon reporter may have missed the Section 17 point I made at the City Council meeting when I spoke at the “open mic” public-comment session.

I explained that the Warwick Comprehensive Plan identifies Buttonwoods Avenue as a public highway running all the way to the shore, through what they call “Private Buttonwoods.” 

I briefly explained the Dorr’s Rebellion fire company aspect, how the Buttonwoods Fire District is an entirely public entity, a fire company organized to protect the public.

Apparently, the reporter weighed the seeming improbability of the city marking Buttonwoods Avenue as a public highway in its master plan, the Comprehensive Plan. 

If you ask people at City Hall about Buttonwoods, they might say, “Oh, you mean Private Buttonwoods, where the rich people live!  That’s not public.”

But it is public, as shown in the Comprehensive Plan, public all the way to the shore.

As the American Colonies were descending into revolution with the Crown in the 1770s, the Royal Surveyor General published a map of shoreline military features, from Providence to the Sag Harbor area in New York.

He made note of the highway running from East Greenwich, through Apponaug, and on to the Buttonwoods Point, showing three Colonial houses when approaching the point.

They are the red house at Budlong Farm, the white house in the onetime orchard by the Buttonwoods Pillars, now the oldest surviving structure in Warwick, and the yellow house as you are approaching the Buttonwoods Point.

Are the Surveyor General’s maps still relevant 200 years later?

His book of maps popped up in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island in the 1970s in an action between New York pilots and Rhode Island harbor pilots who claimed control of Block Island Sound. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court (United States v. Maine in 1985).

The Supreme Court found the Surveyor General’s maps to be relevant, 200-plus years later. The ruling? Block Island Sound is outside the control of the Rhode Island Pilots' Association.

In like manner, Warwick’s Comprehensive Plan is relevant. It shows Buttonwoods Avenue to be a public highway to the shore.

For those with an interest in public rights-of-way to the shore, I encourage you to follow the Facebook group Saving RI Coastal Access/Rights of Way. Here you will find 9,000 people following our work at Buttonwoods, as well as the Westerly fire districts, Charlestown, Middletown and other places where the public is denied access to the shore.

A resident of Budlong Farm Road in Buttonwoods, Richard Langseth has long questioned the local acceptance of Buttonwoods Avenue as a private road.