Woodland Beach
Smyrna, DE
Woodland Beach sits at the end of Route 6 east of Smyrna, once a full resort town with a hotel, a pavilion, and steamboat service from Philadelphia back in the 1880s. What's left today is a boat ramp, a 24 hour fishing pier, and a small, shrinking beach that's swimmable but gets narrow fast once the tide comes in.
The boat ramp and pier get real local use for fishing, but the beach itself is an afterthought that shrinks to almost nothing at high tide.
How we score beachesGo at low tide if you actually want to swim. The sand disappears almost entirely at high tide, leaving mostly the pier and boat ramp usable.
A large gravel lot serves the boat ramp, pier, and beach, with a couple of portable toilets and rarely a shortage of space.
The lot opens directly onto the beach and pier, flat and easy, though the useable sand shrinks significantly at high tide.
Bay water warms into the 70s by summer, inside the June through November hurricane season, though the tide swing here matters more than the season for whether there's any beach to stand on.
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