8 Small Towns on the Atlantic Coast to Visit for a Weekend Getaway

The Atlantic Coast small-town tradition runs the full length of the seaboard, easternmost Maine on one end and Florida's central beaches on the other. The first sun in continental America breaks over a candy-striped 1858 lighthouse in Lubec at roughly five a.m. on a clear June morning. Fifteen hundred miles south, sea turtles still nest by the hundreds along Juno Beach between April and October. In between sit some of the most-loved boardwalks in the country and a handful of working historic lighthouses still in service. The eight towns ahead each work for a three-day weekend, each with its own pace and anchor. Two sit on barrier islands. Two more anchor opposite ends of the coast on lighthouse identity. The rest carry the boardwalk-and-amusement tradition that's been pulling visitors to the Atlantic shore for more than a century.

Isle of Palms, South Carolina

Isle of Palms is a South Carolina barrier-island town of about 4,400 year-round residents with seven miles of public beach. Days fill themselves with swimming, kayaking, surfcasting, and watching pelicans dive-bomb the surf line. Coconut Joe's, The Dinghy, and Lawrence's Seafood handle the casual meals along Front Beach. The Wild Dunes resort covers the northeast end of the island with two Tom Fazio golf courses (the Links and the Harbor), pools, and hotels. Public beach access points line the rest of the island for everyone else. Connector traffic from Charleston picks up by 10 a.m. on weekends, so the move is to be on the sand by nine.

Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

Rehoboth Beach has barely 1,000 year-round residents and lets in millions of summer visitors. The mile-long boardwalk lines a wide public beach and supports Grotto Pizza, Obie's By the Sea, Sandcrab Beach Bar, and Victoria's Restaurant at the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel. Dogfish Head Brewings and Eats on Rehoboth Avenue is the original Dogfish Head brewpub that grew into the national craft-beer brand. Rehoboth has been one of the longest-running LGBTQ+ resort destinations on the Mid-Atlantic, with Rehoboth Pride and Sundance drawing thousands every summer. Cape Henlopen State Park sits to the north and Delaware Seashore State Park to the south for quieter beach access and trails through coastal habitat.

Lubec, Maine

Lubec is the easternmost point of land in the continental United States. A stone marker at West Quoddy Head makes that official. The West Quoddy Head Lighthouse above the point wears candy-cane red and white horizontal stripes; President Jefferson commissioned the original in 1808, and the current 49-foot brick tower has stood since 1858. It still works as an active aid to navigation, and the former keeper's house operates as a small museum. Downtown Lubec sits across the Lubec Narrows from Campobello Island, where Franklin D. Roosevelt's family summered at what's now Roosevelt Campobello International Park. Lubec Brewing Co. pours small-batch ales on Water Street. The Inn on the Wharf and Cohill's Inn handle waterfront lodging. West Quoddy Station offers the chance to be among the first people in America to see the sun come up each morning, with the best windows around the summer solstice.

Emerald Isle, North Carolina

Emerald Isle covers 12 miles of south-facing beach along Bogue Banks, the long barrier island that runs along North Carolina's Crystal Coast. About 3,800 residents call it home year-round; family renters and summer visitors do the rest. The beach handles swimming, surfing, fishing, water skiing, and wakeboarding, and a volunteer sea turtle patrol monitors loggerhead nests from May through August. The North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, a few miles up the island, holds a 306,000-gallon Living Shipwreck tank with a three-quarter-scale German U-boat replica plus the Queen Anne's Revenge gallery on Blackbeard's flagship, which wrecked in nearby Beaufort Inlet in 1718. Atlantic Beach, Indian Beach, and Pine Knoll Shores also sit on Bogue Banks for variety along the same strip of sand.

Provincetown, Massachusetts

Provincetown sits at the absolute tip of Cape Cod and is the spot where the Mayflower first dropped anchor on November 11, 1620, before the Pilgrims moved on to Plymouth. The Pilgrim Monument, a 252-foot all-granite tower completed in 1910, commemorates that first landing; an interior spiral ramp climbs to panoramic views over the harbor and out to the Atlantic. The Provincetown Museum at the monument's base fills in the rest of town history. Commercial Street runs the length of P-town with galleries, seafood restaurants, drag bars, and bookstores stacked side by side. Herring Cove Beach within Cape Cod National Seashore handles the sunset crowd. The Land's End Inn on Gull Hill served as a filming location for season 10 of American Horror Story, and lodging in town spans boutique inns (White Porch Inn, Crowne Pointe Hotel and Spa) and historic guesthouses.

Juno Beach, Florida

Juno Beach in Palm Beach County, Florida, has about 4,000 residents and runs at a quieter pace than its busier coastal neighbors. The Loggerhead Marinelife Center near the pier operates a sea turtle hospital and research center; Juno Beach hosts one of the world's densest loggerhead nesting populations between April and October, and the LMC's nesting program protects hundreds of nests each season. Papa Kwans Coffee Shop handles the morning routine. The Juno Dunes Natural Area protects coastal habitat just inland from the beach. The Juno Beach Pier extends 990 feet into the Atlantic for fishing and dolphin spotting. Donald Ross Road handles local dining and lodging, with the Thirsty Turtle Seagrill and the Holiday Inn Express anchoring opposite ends of the strip.

Tybee Island, Georgia

Tybee Island sits about 20 minutes east of Savannah as Georgia's primary public beach. The barrier-island town has just over 3,000 residents and three miles of beach. Tybee Island Light Station was first lit in 1736, rebuilt several times since, and the current 154-foot tower (1867) is one of the oldest lighthouses in the country still in operation. It's open for climbing tours. The Tybee Island Marine Science Center on the south end of the island runs a small aquarium and a turtle program. The Crab Shack and the Royal Palms Motel are longtime locally owned mainstays for food and lodging. A resident pod of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins lives in the channel just offshore, and Captain Derek's Tybee Dolphin Adventure runs daily eco-tours out to see them.

Ocean City, Maryland

Ocean City is an off-season small town and a peak-summer megacity. Year-round population sits around 7,000, but summer brings the town to roughly 350,000 daily residents and about eight million annual visitors. The Ocean City Boardwalk runs three miles along the beach past the classic food and amusement stops that built the place: Fisher's Popcorn, Dolle's Candyland, and Thrasher's French Fries. Jolly Roger Amusement Park and Splash Mountain Water Park handle the rest of the family-amusement side. Springfest at the Inlet Lot and the Maryland International Kite Expo on the boardwalk both arrive each spring for visitors who'd rather skip the August crush. The Princess Royale Oceanfront Resort handles direct-beach lodging on the north end of town.

Eight Weekends, Eight Coasts

The eight towns above split the Atlantic Coast into eight different weekends. Lubec carries the easternmost-point and 19th-century lighthouse identity. Rehoboth Beach and Ocean City run on boardwalk-and-amusement scale. Provincetown and Tybee Island anchor opposite ends of the coast with art-colony and dolphin-watching identities. Isle of Palms, Emerald Isle, and Juno Beach all build their reputation around quieter beach access and protected coastal habitat. Eight arguments that skipping the major beach cities for a smaller community on the same shoreline tends to pay off.