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The Cliff Walk has been an accessible public path since the year 1640 and originally meandered across the lawn close to where the house is now. Olmsted relocated it to the water's edge by introducing a stone arch bridge across the rocky inlet. The bridge washed out in the hurricanes of 1938 and 1954, and for decades, a series of plank bridges took its place. In 2005, the State of Rhode Island built the bridge you see today, which evokes Olmsted's original design in the use of stone over a steel infrastructure.

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