North Smithfield is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States, settled as a farming community in 1666 and incorporated into its present form in 1871.

At 586 ft (179 m), Woonsocket Hill in North Smithfield is one of the highest points in Rhode Island.

[3] The first colonization occurred after a Native American, "William Minnian" (also known as "Quashawannamut") a Praying Indian[4] from Punkkupage Massachusetts Bay, on May 14, 1666, and again in 1669 with the permission of King Philip,[5] deeded approximately 2,000 acres" to John Mowry and Edward Inman who partnered with Nathaniel Mowry, John Steere, and Thomas Walling in dividing up the purchased tract.

[3] During King Philip's War in 1676 Connecticut militia forces killed the last Narragansett sachem, Queen Quaiapen, and Stonewall John in Mattity Swamp in what is now North Smithfield in the Second Battle of Nipsachuck.

Today North Smithfield is part of the John H. Chaffee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor.

The Blackstone Valley is the oldest industrialized region in the U.S. A local North Smithfield industry today, Berroco Yarns, is a continuation of an original family owned woolen company first established in this valley by Daniel Day in 1809.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth-century, North Smithfield "was served by several trolley and railroad lines; now all are gone save one.

A freight-only spur line of the Providence and Worcester Railroad extends from the main line in Woonsocket and terminates [in Slatersville] at the Providence Pike"[8] where it "primarily serves a single customer, a steel supplier called Denman and Davis,"[9] a company in Slatersville which is now part of O’Neal Steel, Inc.[10]As of the census of 2020, there were 12,588 people and 5,044 households in the town.