People forget Rhode Island was essentially an enormous factory compressed into a tiny state, largely because of its peculiar geography of wet, hilly uplands descending rapidly through short rivers into a long, protected tidal bay. Waterpower, ocean shipping, merchant capital, and skilled mechanics were placed almost on top of one another. By the mid-1800s, the Blackstone and its tributaries alone contained more than one hundred mills and mill villages which are still seen and felt today. By 1940, Rhode Island was not merely manufacturing war materiel. Its mills produced military cloth and blankets, while its foundries and machine shops made the tools, gauges, precision components, and production equipment that allowed factories across America to manufacture at scale. During the war, Newport would produce roughly 80% of the nation’s torpedoes. Though it may not seem like it right now, RI was entire industrial civilization compressed into a few dozen miles. There’s much to be tapped back into because of that.