Buttonwood Beach is a bucolic neighborhood on the eastern limb of the Nausauket neck, located in the West Bay area of Warwick, Rhode Island.

Moses Bixby of Providence's Cranston Street Baptist Church, who was looking for a place to establish a summer colony by the shore for his congregation.

He envisioned a community that would be similar to Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, where the Methodists established a summer campground in 1835.

[citation needed] The 1779 British Royal Navy Navigational Chart surveyed by Col. Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres includes these ancient houses as well as Buttonwoods Avenue, the highway that connects these settlements to the East Greenwich town center.

Local folklore attributes Bixby to have been the facilitator of that engagement documented in the book called Anna and The King of Siam.

This was also the location of the first May Breakfast in Rhode Island established one year later by Mrs. Ruby King to raise money for a new church.

[7] An early plat of the campgrounds shows the laying out of 1,026 lots on 420 acres (170 ha) of land and a large tabernacle.

[citation needed] In A Walking Tour of Buttonwoods Beach, written by Robert O. Jones of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, he reports that the “shore bordering the Greene Farms at Nassauket (actually Baker’s Creek) became a popular destination for excursions.

[citation needed] In the 1830s the Kinnecom family, a group registered with the Narragansett Indian Tribe,[8] started to hold clambakes on the Greene property, the earliest-known effort to make a commercial success of what had been a long-standing Rhode Island social and culinary tradition.

[10] The plan for the Buttonwoods site now located at the Rhode Island Historical Society in Providence called for 1,000 or so land parcels to be sold to Baptists from around the region.

The campgrounds were resurveyed in 1882 into much larger lots, many of remained unsold and were combined into a large tract of open space in recent years.

First a horse railway was established from Apponaug to the Hill farm and then steam trains were introduced from Auburn, RI.

A cottage at 5 13th Avenue, across from the location of the original Moses Bixby house, built in 1872, was also leveled during the real estate boom of the 2000s upon the death of the former owner who had lived there for much of the 20th Century.

[citation needed] At that time the Buttonwoods Campgrounds was established (circa 1899) allowing families to erect long tents (said to have been army surplus from the Civil War) and spend summers on the shore of Greenwich Bay.

Henry Warner Budlong, whose memorial building sits next to Warwick City Hall in Apponaug, was a bachelor with no heirs.

The Hohler/Maynard families, with financial support from the summer residents, purchased an identical tract of waterfront land which was given to the state (and then the City of Warwick) to satisfy the Budlong will.

[citation needed] The Buttonwood Beach Association was incorporated in July 1872 by a special act of the Rhode Island General Assembly.

The following is the general description of this charter: The Buttonwood Beach Association now organizes activities and celebrations for residents, many held at the Buttonwooods Fire District-owned building called the Casino.

See Newport Realty v. Lynch (2005) and Warwick Sewer Authority v. Carlone (2012)) The Rhode Island Supreme Court held in 2020 in Clark v. Buttonwoods Beach Association that the streets are public.

This was after the Beach Association had filed a motion in Superior Court defending Promenade Avenue against Clark's claim of adverse possession pointing out that the streets are public under the "King's Rights" doctrine.)

The association members have a community hall where various social functions and activities are held for the benefit of residents of all ages.

Despite considerable erosion of its once pristine beach (due directly to the Stafford Act FEMA-financed construction of a massive seawall to protect Old Buttonwoods' shoreline) the summer community continues to be populated by families with youngsters and by snowbird seniors.

Recently, the land was put under the Rhode Island Farm, Forest, and Open Space Act, with a pledge not to be developed.