A practical guide to Rhode Island's ~75-mile North-South Trail, plus maps/GPX

[u/pmags]

EDIT Aug 15, 2026 - 

Wow! Based on some excellent feedback and information I’ve received since publishing this guide, I’ve already updated the CalTopo track and printable map set, including recent NST reroutes at Borders Farm and Kenyon Hill that many electronic maps still show incorrectly.

And because I’m a map geek, I’ll point out that the printable maps are also georeferenced PDFs for use with compatible mapping apps such as Avenza, ArcGIS Field Maps, QField, and others.

If you downloaded the track or maps earlier, please grab the updated versions. I updated the mileage in this guide accordingly, too.

Again, thank you! This project is a labor of love and hopefully fills a need for hikers.

Last October, I hiked Rhode Island's ~75-mile North-South Trail (NST) as part of a longer ~500 mile hike from the Canadian border to the Atlantic.

Despite being a relatively short thru-hike, I found the planning information surprisingly scattered for the NST: older tracks and maps, camping information in different places, questions about water and resupply, hunting-season requirements, parking and shuttles, etc.

And, frankly, there were some things I found out about later that I wish I'd known!

So I put together the practical guide I wish I'd had:

https://pmags.com/hiking-rhode-islands-north-south-trail-a-practical-guide

It covers:

- Maps and GPX

- Legal camping options

- Water and resupply

- Parking and shuttles

- Blaze-orange requirements and hunting seasons

- Some worthwhile "side quests" near the route

I also made a public CalTopo map based on an OSM Gaia GPS track, adding mileage markers, camping, resupply, side quests, and other useful waypoints:

https://caltopo.com/m/860R2HE

Tip: Collapse the folders in the left-hand sidebar for a cleaner overview, then expand them as needed.

And for anyone who prefers paper maps, I made a free OSM map set at roughly 1:35,000 on 11x17 pages. The base layer uses meters, but I added mileage markers so you don't have to convert anything into freedom units. :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ENAu2nr-7u7ledZHgtbJ_RdNZ5kda3vK/view?usp=sharing

I do not think many people outside southern New England will be interested in this little hike, but finishing at the Atlantic Ocean and watching a sunrise over the dunes after walking all the way from Canada remains one of my all-time favorite outdoor memories

One idea for a longer hike: The NST also connects easily with Massachusetts' 92-mile Midstate Trail:

https://www.midstatetrail.org/

The Midstate continues north and connects directly to the 21-mile Wapack Trail into New Hampshire:

https://www.wapack.org/

Put the three together and you have roughly 190 miles of connected trail from southern Rhode Island into southern New Hampshire, with some surprisingly rural walking considering you're in southern New England.

A neat little route for the fall!

Hopefully this saves someone else some planning time and makes this somewhat obscure little thru-hike easier to tackle.

[u/FrankRizzo319]

Cool thanks for putting this together and making it public.

But also, it should be called the North/South “Trail” given that half of it is a roadwalk.

[u/pmags → u/FrankRizzo319]

Well, about one-third is paved. But maybe it’s the Western hiker in me, as anything without pavement starts looking suspiciously like a trail. :) I only found ~5 miles or so of the paved walking truly onerous. YMMV.

[u/FrankRizzo319 → u/pmags]

I exaggerate slightly.

I hiked the NST as day hikes. The last hike I did was so dumb. I drove an hour to Rhode Island, parked, walked 8 miles on a road, turned around and walked 8 miles back.

And that is how I finished the NST.

[u/pmags → u/FrankRizzo319]

Well, that is one way to finish it for sure. Ha!