The Woonasquatucket River is a river in the state of Rhode Island in the United States. It flows around nineteen miles and drains across a watershed of around fifty square miles. Along with the Blackstone River to its north, the Woonasquatucket was selected as a Heritage River of America in the year 1998. Both the rivers played a very crucial role in the industrial revolution, as well as the history of the Rhode Island in the nineteenth century. Evidence of this magnificent industrial history stands up in the fact that you have eighteen dams along side the length of the river as a testimony to its marvelous past.

This highly acclaimed river starts its journey from the swamps west of the Primrose Pond of the North Smithfield and flows southeast past the Primrose Pond to the Stillwater Reservoir. As it is, below the reservoir, the Woonasquatucket continues southeast, thereby providing water to a number of ponds, until going as under the Providence Place mall. Thereafter it joins the Moshassuck River in the front of One Citizens Plaza building of the downtown Providence to shape the Providence River. As it is, the lower part of the Woonasquatucket river, below the Rising Sun Dam of Olneyville is said to be tidal.

The original riverbed of Woonasquatucket river, east of Interstate 95, no longer exists and has been diverted to a man-made channel beneath the Providence Place Mall and through the Waterplace Park. In the Waterplace Park, Woonasquatucket River is also employed as a part of Waterfire.

The river crosses over from Greenville Road and Douglas Pike in North Smithfield; Farnum Pike, Old Forge Road, Farnum Pike, George Washington Highway, Capron Road, Whipple Avenue, Farnum Pike, Esmond Mill Drive and Esmond Street in Smithfield, Angell Avenue, Putnam Pike and Allendale Avenue in North Providence; Greenville Avenue in Johnston; and Glenbridge Avenue, Manton Avenue, Valley Street, Delaine Street,  Atwells Avenue, Acorn Street, Eagle Street, Dean Street, Bath Street, Interstate 95, Exchange Street, Francis Street and Steeple Street in Providence.

In addition to several unnamed tributaries, the major brooks and rivers, which feed the Woonasquatucket, include Hawkins Brook, Latham Brook, Harris Brook, Assapumpset Brook and Stillwater River.

A major development in the recent years has been the Woonasquatucket River Greenway, which is a proposed 5.7-mile chain of paths along with linear parks, which would ultimately connect the neighborhoods of Hartford, Manton, and Olneyville to the WaterPlace Park, as well as the Narragansett Bay in Providence.

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