The airport site was known as Southwick's Grove in the mid-to-late 1800s. At the turn of the twentieth century the site was home to Aquidneck Park, a horse racing track. Wealthy summer residents such as Willie K Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor and I. Townsend Burden would occasionally race automobiles of various types there. The property was renamed Bethshan-in-the-Woods by Mrs. Theodore K. Gibbs, who had purchased it to preserve the property as a picnic ground for children.

Army Air Force Captain Robert F. Wood established the Newport Air Park on the site in 1946. It appears on topographical maps of the area by 1958 with two airstrips—one along the current 4/22 orientation, and a nearly perpendicular one. They were paved by 1953, when the airport received an Air Force contract to maintain planes for keeping local Air Force pilots current.

The airport site was acquired by the state in July 1960, and new construction of the runways and taxiways was completed by September 1967. In July 1964, the first aircraft accident at the Newport airport (a gear-up landing) was documented by the National Transportation Safety Board. The first fatal accident at Newport State Airport was a mid-air collision between two general aviation aircraft on April 23, 1969. In 2011 part of the film Moonrise Kingdom was filmed at the airport.