The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island, is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area. Rhode Island borders Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, and shares a water boundary with New York's Fishers Island to the southwest.
Despite the name, most of Rhode Island is on the mainland United States. The name Rhode Island and Providence Plantations derives from the merger of two colonies, Providence Plantations and Rhode Island. Providence Plantations was the name of the colony founded by Roger Williams in the area now known as the City of Providence. Rhode Island, the other colonial settlement, was founded in the area of present-day Newport, on Aquidneck Island, the largest of several islands in Narragansett Bay.
Rhode Island was the first of the thirteen original colonies to declare independence from British rule and the last to ratify the United States Constitution.
Rhode Island's official nickname is "The Ocean State," a reference to the state's geography, since Rhode Island has several large bays and inlets that amount to about 30% of its total area. Its land area is 1,045 square miles (2706 km2), but its total area is significantly larger (in the United States, all seawater and ocean floors that are more than three nautical miles from land belong to the Federal Government.)
In 1524, Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to visit any part of what is now Rhode Island. He came to what is now Block Island and named it "Luisa" after Louise of Savoy, Queen mother of France. When the founders of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations surveyed the land, they thought that Aquidneck Island was the place. A mistake occurred in 1690, when Luisa was charted by the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, after whom Luisa was renamed by the Dutch West India Company. However, their motives in doing so are unknown.[9] The official explanation by the State of Rhode Island is that Mr. Adriaen Block named the area "Roodt Eylandt", meaning "red island", in reference to the red clay that lines the shore, and that this name was later anglicized when the region came under British rule,