14 Most Scenic Towns on the Atlantic Coast
Ogunquit, Maine, threads a paved cliff path called the Marginal Way along more than a mile of headland, the open Atlantic just below. Built in 1749, the Beavertail Light still marks the mouth of Narragansett Bay at Jamestown, Rhode Island. The fishing pier at Folly Beach, South Carolina, reaches more than a thousand feet out over the surf. Decades of tide have toppled the live oaks across Driftwood Beach on Georgia's Jekyll Island. Down in St. Augustine, Florida, a coquina fort has guarded the harbor since the 1600s.
Ogunquit, Maine
Ogunquit means "beautiful place by the sea" in Abenaki, a fitting name for a town built around a three-and-a-half-mile barrier beach and the working harbor at Perkins Cove. Stephen King gave it a second life in fiction as the hometown of Frannie Goldsmith, where the early chapters of The Stand play out.
Fewer than 1,500 people live here year-round, about 45 minutes south of Portland, and a seasonal trolley loops the village so summer visitors can skip the parking hunt. USA Today readers voted it the best coastal small town in America in 2016. Antique shops line the side streets, and the outlet stores of Kittery are a half-hour drive down the Maine coast.
Hull, Massachusetts
A century ago, Hull was the South Shore's answer to Coney Island, an amusement resort where Bostonians rode the steamer out to Paragon Park and the sand at Nantasket Beach. Paragon Park closed decades ago, but the wide grey beach remains, and low tide still leaves shallow pools where children and migrating shorebirds gather.
About 10,000 people live on the narrow peninsula, a short ferry ride across the harbor from the city. Long before the Hyannis Port compound, the Kennedys summered in Hull at the home of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, the former Boston mayor and grandfather of John F. Kennedy. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was born in the town in 1915.
Jamestown, Rhode Island
Jamestown is the town on Conanicut Island in the middle of Narragansett Bay, linked by bridges to Newport and the mainland. At the island's southern tip, Beavertail State Park surrounds the Beavertail Lighthouse, whose first tower went up in 1749 as Rhode Island's first lighthouse and the third in the American colonies. The current granite tower dates to 1856.
Fort Wetherill State Park, on the southeastern point, supplied the rocky cove that stood in for the secret beach in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. Inland, Watson Farm is a 265-acre working farm owned by Historic New England, where visitors walk the same fields that have been in cultivation for generations.
Madison, Connecticut
Madison lines the Connecticut shore along Long Island Sound, an old beach town with a literary streak. RJ Julia Booksellers, one of New England's best-known independent bookstores, is the heart of downtown, and the Madison Art Cinema screens independent films a few doors away.
The town's Sculpture Mile sets contemporary work along the Boston Post Road for an easy walking tour. Hammonasset Beach State Park gives Madison more than two miles of Connecticut shoreline, the largest shoreline park in the state, with the Surf Club section offering restaurants, rentals, and room to spread out.
Lewes, Delaware
Lewes calls itself the first town in the first state, founded by Dutch settlers in 1631 on the shore where Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic. Its own beach lies inside Cape Henlopen State Park, where a Second World War observation tower still stands above the dunes.
The compact downtown mixes Dutch and colonial buildings, independent shops, and restaurants, and Delaware charges no sales tax on any of it. A paved trail links the town to neighboring Rehoboth Beach, and rented bicycles are a common way to cover the flat ground between the two. Lewes works as a base for a string of Delaware beach towns within a few miles of each other.
Assateague Island, Maryland
Assateague Island is a 37-mile barrier island shared by Maryland and Virginia, divided by a fence at the state line, with the larger northern section in Maryland. The Maryland end forms Assateague Island National Seashore, reached by car from Route 611 near Ocean City. The Virginia end is entered separately through Chincoteague, and no road crosses between them.
The seashore's best-known residents are its feral horses, a Maryland herd of 80 to 100 managed by the National Park Service, with a second herd of about 150 on the Virginia side. The animals roam the dunes and beaches freely, and rangers ask visitors to watch from a distance, since the horses bite and kick. Outfitters near the entrance rent kayaks, canoes, and bicycles, and beach fires are allowed in season with firewood bought locally to keep out invasive pests.
Jekyll Island, Georgia
Jekyll Island spent the Gilded Age as the most exclusive winter retreat in America, a private club founded in 1886 whose members included the Morgans, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers. Georgia bought the island in 1947 and turned it into a state park, and only a small year-round community lives there now.
The Summer Waves water park is a summer fixture for families, and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, the only sea-turtle hospital in the state, treats injured sea turtles pulled from the Atlantic. Driftwood Beach, on the island's north end, is its signature stretch of sand. The island's history is on display at Mosaic, the museum in the historic club district.
Kennebunkport, Maine
Kennebunkport takes its name from the Abenaki word for "long sand bar," and Goose Rocks Beach delivers exactly that, a long ribbon of pale sand north of the village. About 3,600 people live in town, which is dense with the inns and bed-and-breakfasts Maine is known for.
Its best-known address is Walker's Point, the seaside compound that served as the summer home of President George H. W. Bush and a frequent host to visiting heads of state. Kennebunkport manages the unusual trick of being both a presidential retreat and an ordinary Maine harbor town, where lobster boats work the same water.
Avon, North Carolina
Avon lies midway down Hatteras Island, one of the North Carolina Outer Banks towns reachable by car along the two-lane Route 12. Fewer than 800 people live there, on a sliver of land with the Atlantic on one side and Pamlico Sound on the other.
That sound-side water, steady and shallow, has made the area a magnet for windsurfers and kiteboarders, with rental shops and lessons close at hand. The village is low-key, a handful of shops and a fishing pier, no boardwalk, and boat tours head out into the sound for a wider look at the island.
Folly Beach, South Carolina
Folly Beach is the beach town closest to Charleston, about 12 miles southwest on its own barrier island. A couple thousand people live there, and the mix of South Carolina Lowcountry cooking and surf-town looseness gives it a character distinct from the historic city up the road.
The rebuilt Edwin S. Taylor Fishing Pier reaches more than 1,000 feet over the Atlantic, long enough to leave the shore behind entirely. Paddleboard and kayak guides lead trips along the tidal creeks, where bottlenose dolphins surface around the boards, and the surf off Folly Beach pulls board riders year-round.
St. Augustine, Florida
Spanish admiral Pedro Menendez founded St. Augustine in 1565, making it the oldest continuously occupied European-founded settlement in the continental United States. Just under 15,000 people live there today, among streets the Spanish laid out more than four centuries ago.
The Castillo de San Marcos, a coquina-stone fort begun in 1672, still guards the harbor, and the narrow lanes behind it preserve some of the oldest colonial buildings in the country. The St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum traces the city's long run-in with piracy, and the costumed ghost tours after dark are a local institution. Boat captains along the waterfront lead trips to spot dolphins and manatees in the tidal estuary.
Boothbay Harbor, Maine
Boothbay Harbor is the kind of Maine harbor town that "Murder, She Wrote" spent twelve seasons evoking, less than an hour's drive south of Augusta. About 2,000 people live around the working harbor, where the tide turns the view over completely twice a day at Ocean Point.
A short walk away, Penny Lake Preserve protects freshwater habitat on accessible, wheelchair-friendly trails. The bigger trip is offshore. Monhegan Island, an artists' colony reachable only by ferry, has no paved roads and a working lighthouse that has stood since 1824. Grimes Cove offers calm swimming and a view out over the surrounding islands.
Tybee Island, Georgia
Tybee Island is Savannah's beach, 18 miles east of the city at the mouth of the Savannah River. About 3,100 people live there, on an island that became a seaside resort and a destination for treating lung ailments in the late 1800s. Its history reaches back further still. In 1862, Union gunners on Tybee bombarded Fort Pulaski across the channel, an early Civil War siege whose rifled cannon made masonry forts obsolete almost overnight.
The Tybee Island Light Station dates to 1736, though the current tower, the oldest and tallest in Georgia, was rebuilt in 1867 on the base of a 1773 brick lighthouse. The Tybee Island Pirate Festival takes over the streets each October, and the weekend farmers markets turn up regional produce and crafts.
Isle of Palms, South Carolina
Isle of Palms is a barrier-island town of about 4,300 people just north of Charleston, reached by a connector bridge over the marsh. The beach is the center of everything, cleaned regularly by local volunteers and edged by a pier and boardwalk that look out over the Atlantic.
Barrier Island Ecotours leads boat trips into the surrounding creeks and the nearby wildlife refuge, with a focus on the area's salt-marsh ecology and conservation work. Rental shops put out mopeds and boats for getting around the island and onto the water. The town feels quieter than the bigger resorts down the coast, which is why a lot of people choose it.
Older Than The Map
Long before these towns had English names, people lived along this coast for thousands of years, from the Wabanaki homelands of the Maine shore to the Timucua country of northern Florida and the Seminole lands further south. The Europeans who arrived in the 1500s are newcomers by that measure. That long memory is part of what rewards slowing down here, whether the pull is the wild horses on Assateague, the brick streets of Lewes, or a pier at Tybee reaching into the Savannah River's mouth. The Atlantic has been somebody's front yard for a very long time.
