Watch Hill is an affluent coastal neighborhood and census-designated place in the town of Westerly, Rhode Island.

It came to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th century as an exclusive summer resort, with wealthy families building sprawling Victorian-style "cottages" along the peninsula.

Watch Hill is characterized by The New York Times as a community "with a strong sense of privacy and of discreetly used wealth," in contrast with "the overpowering castles of the very rich" in nearby Newport.

[2] The Watch Hill area was occupied by Niantic Indians in the 17th century, led by Harman Garrett.

[3] Some landmarks in the village include the Watch Hill Lighthouse, the first of which was built in 1745; The Flying Horse Carousel, the oldest operating suspended-horse carousel in the United States and a National Historic Landmark; the Ocean House hotel; and the 1916 Olympia Tea Room.

It was one of a series of such forts constructed to guard the eastern entrance to Long Island Sound as part of the coastal defense network for New York City during the Spanish–American War.

Fifteen people were killed and others survived by clinging to wreckage, as they were swept across the bay to Connecticut.

Both Napatree and Sandy Point shelter Little Narragansett Bay and have made Watch Hill a popular harbor around which the business district has grown.

The 2020 United States census counted 212 people, 94 households, and 41 families in Watch Hill.

[13] The village was known as "a somewhat staid and family-oriented community compared to glittering Newport, Rhode Island's other, more famous summer colony.

[2] The New York Times notes that "Watch Hill impresses visitors with a strong sense of privacy and of discreetly used wealth—the rambling, old-fashioned, turreted and gingerbreaded Victorian summer houses with piazzas and softly rolling lawns have little in common with the overpowering castles of the very rich in Newport, a place rarely mentioned in Watch Hill even though it is barely 30 miles distant.

It is the only Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five Diamond Hotel in Rhode Island and has been described by The New York Times as a place which "conjures up another age, when women wore white gloves to tea and golf was a newfangled pastime.

It excludes a portion west of that line on the north side including properties on Watch Hill Rd.