Betterton Beach
Betterton, MD
Betterton is a small former Victorian resort town on the Eastern Shore, and its five-acre public beach still draws people down from Baltimore the way it did a century ago. It sits near where the Sassafras River meets the upper Chesapeake, and the freshwater current running past keeps the water noticeably freer of sea nettles than beaches further south.
A real small-town beach with a genuine history and fewer jellyfish than most of the Bay, though it's a modest five acres rather than a destination-sized stretch of sand.
How we score beachesFewer jellyfish here than most of the Bay thanks to the Sassafras River current, worth remembering if nettles have kept you out of the water elsewhere that week.
A lot at the beach serves visitors directly, free to use.
A boardwalk and flat beach area connect the lot to the sand, with restrooms on site.
Water warms into the mid 70s by August, with the freshwater mix from the Sassafras keeping it a touch cooler than the open Bay. A fishing jetty and public pier stay useful well outside swim season.
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