Rhode Island as New Penzance

Moonrise Kingdom takes place on the fictional island of New Penzance, a remote New England community accessible only by boat, small enough that everyone knows everyone, wild enough that two kids can disappear into the woods for days. To create this world, Wes Anderson shot entirely in Rhode Island during the spring and summer of 2011 — and he made the smallest state in the country feel like the most secluded place on earth.

Rhode Island was an inspired choice. The state’s coastline — rocky, windswept, dotted with old fortifications and overgrown paths — has exactly the quality Anderson needed: a landscape that feels both civilized and untamed, settled and slightly forgotten. New Penzance had to be a place where mid-century institutions (scouting, the church, the law) coexist with genuine wilderness. Rhode Island gave him both.

The Key Locations

Fort Wetherill State Park — Camp Ivanhoe

The headquarters of Khaki Scout Troop 55 was built on the grounds of Fort Wetherill in Jamestown, on Conanicut Island. The abandoned coastal fortification, originally constructed in the late 19th century to defend Narragansett Bay, provided the ideal backdrop for Anderson’s ramshackle summer camp.

The production team built Camp Ivanhoe’s tents, flagpole, and wooden structures on the fort’s grounds. The rocky bluffs above the water gave the camp its dramatic setting — you can see the ocean stretching out behind the scouts during inspection scenes. The stone remnants of the actual fort are visible in several shots, adding a layer of history to the camp’s improvised architecture.

Today, Fort Wetherill is a public state park. The camp structures have been removed, but the landscape is immediately recognizable. The rocky overlooks, the paths through scrubby coastal vegetation, the panoramic views of the bay — all of it is accessible. Visitors who’ve seen the film will recognize the terrain instantly, even without the canvas tents.

Trinity Church, Newport

The church where the children perform Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde — the performance where Sam first sees Suzy — is Trinity Church in Newport. Built in 1726, it’s one of the finest colonial-era churches in the country, with a white clapboard exterior and a soaring interior that photographs beautifully.

Anderson used the church’s genuine interior for the performance scenes. The wooden pews, the elevated pulpit, the clear glass windows — everything you see on screen is real. The production added Britten’s staging elements (the animals, the ark), but the space itself needed no embellishment.

Trinity Church is an active Episcopal parish and a National Historic Landmark. It’s open to visitors and holds regular services. The interior is essentially unchanged from what appears in the film.

Conanicut Island (Jamestown)

Much of the film’s outdoor footage was shot across Conanicut Island, the narrow island in the middle of Narragansett Bay where Jamestown is located. The island’s mix of wooded trails, rocky shoreline, and open meadows gave Anderson the varied terrain he needed for Sam and Suzy’s cross-island trek.

Several beaches on Conanicut serve as the cove Sam and Suzy christen Moonrise Kingdom. The production used multiple shoreline locations, combining them through editing to create the impression of a single, secluded inlet. The rocky, slightly wild quality of the beaches — not the manicured sand of a resort, but the rough edges of a New England coast — was essential to the scene’s feeling of genuine discovery.

Prudence Island

Some of the film’s more remote scenes were shot on Prudence Island, a sparsely populated island in Narragansett Bay accessible only by a short ferry from Bristol. With a year-round population of fewer than 100 people, Prudence provided the isolation that New Penzance required.

The island’s unpaved roads, overgrown fields, and absence of commercial development made it a convincing stand-in for the uninhabited parts of Sam and Suzy’s fictional home. Anderson used Prudence for several of the wilderness hiking sequences, taking advantage of the island’s genuinely remote feeling.

Prudence Island is still accessible by ferry and remains largely undeveloped. Visitors should note that much of the island is conservation land managed by the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, so access to some areas is restricted.

The Bishop House

The Bishop family home — that red-brown clapboard house with the lighthouse lamp room at the top — is a private residence in the Narragansett area. Production designer Adam Stockhausen modified the exterior and heavily dressed the interior to create the cluttered, bookish environment of Walt and Laura Bishop’s home.

The house’s most distinctive feature — the widow’s walk or cupola where Suzy stations herself with binoculars — was an existing architectural element that Anderson and Stockhausen recognized as perfect for the character. Suzy’s position at the top of the house, looking out through her binoculars, is one of the film’s defining images, and it required a house with exactly this kind of elevated vantage point.

As a private home, this location cannot be visited, but driving through the coastal neighborhoods of Narragansett will give you a strong sense of the residential character Anderson was drawing from — the weathered New England homes, the proximity to water, the slightly faded grandeur.

Various Narragansett Locations

Several scenes were shot in and around Narragansett proper. The town’s mix of modest mid-century buildings, coastal roads, and unpretentious community spaces gave Anderson the feel of a small island town that’s functional rather than picturesque.

Captain Sharp’s single-room house, the scenes of the wider community mobilizing for the search, and various transitional shots all draw on Narragansett locations. The town has the right quality of lived-in modesty — a place where the police captain really would have a one-room house and the local church really would be the center of community life.

Why Rhode Island Worked

Anderson could have shot Moonrise Kingdom on one of the actual islands off the New England coast — Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island. He chose Rhode Island’s smaller, less famous locations for specific reasons.

First, control. Anderson’s films require total visual control of the environment, and shooting on a popular vacation island would have meant dealing with tourist traffic, commercial signage, and modern intrusions. Rhode Island’s quieter locations — Fort Wetherill, Prudence Island, the back roads of Conanicut — offered environments he could manage completely.

Second, authenticity. New Penzance isn’t supposed to be a glamorous island. It’s a working community — a place with a volunteer fire department and one police officer and a summer camp that operates on a shoestring. Rhode Island’s more modest coastal communities have that quality naturally. The lack of resort polish is the point.

Third, the light. Rhode Island’s coastal light — filtered through frequent cloud cover, reflected off the grey-green water of Narragansett Bay — has a particular quality that matched the 16mm film stock Anderson and cinematographer Robert Yeoman were using. It’s softer than bright sun, warmer than overcast, and it gives the outdoor scenes their distinctive golden-green cast.

Visiting the Locations Today

For fans making a pilgrimage, here’s a practical guide.

Fort Wetherill State Park is the essential stop. It’s free, open to the public, and the landscape is unmistakable. Allow an hour or two to walk the trails and find the overlooks that appear in the film. The park is in Jamestown, accessible via the Jamestown-Verrazzano Bridge.

Trinity Church in Newport is worth a visit for the architecture alone, film connection aside. Check their website for visiting hours.

Prudence Island requires a ferry from Bristol (Prudence Island Ferry). It’s a quiet, low-key day trip — bring water and food, as services are minimal. The island is best explored on foot or by bicycle.

Narragansett is a pleasant coastal town that rewards a slow drive through its residential streets and shoreline. Grab lunch and look at the houses. You’ll see the Bishop home’s architectural siblings everywhere.

The filming was over fifteen years ago now. The camp is gone. The props are gone. But the landscape — the rocky shores, the scrubby woods, the grey water, the colonial churches — remains. Rhode Island was always the real star of Moonrise Kingdom’s visual world, and unlike a set, it hasn’t been struck. It’s still there, waiting to be discovered, much like a tidal inlet at mile marker 3.25.