Bethany Beach
Small Incorporated Seaside Town In Sussex County, One Of The Three Delaware 'Quiet Resorts' With South Bethany And Fenwick Island · Bethany Beach, Delaware
Bethany Beach is a small, low-key seaside town on the southern Delaware coast, about 13 miles south of Rehoboth and a few miles north of Fenwick Island. With South Bethany and Fenwick it makes up what locals call the Quiet Resorts, and the name is fair: this is a family rental town, not a bar town. The centre is Garfield Parkway, which runs from Route 1 to a short, tidy boardwalk with a bandstand where free concerts and movie nights are held on summer evenings, and the town's totem pole stands at the entrance to greet drivers. The beach itself is wide, sandy, lifeguarded in season and free to use, because Delaware towns do not sell beach tags the way New Jersey does; what you pay for is parking, through meters and a phone app in the busy months. Behind the town lie the Assawoman Canal and Little Assawoman Bay, calm water for kayaks and paddleboards. Most visitors rent a house or condo by the week, Saturday to Saturday, so Route 1 and Route 26 jam on changeover days. Out of season the town stays lived in but very quiet.
Garfield Parkway and the Boardwalk, Bethany Beach, Delaware, 19930, United States
Bethany Beach is a town, so the beach and boardwalk have no gate or ticket; the sand is open to walk on at any hour, although town ordinances limit some uses overnight and in the season (such as tents, fires and dogs), so read the signs at the street-end crossings. What follows the calendar is everything around it. Lifeguards usually cover the main beach from around Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day, during set daytime hours only, and outside those hours and weeks you swim unguarded; confirm the patrol season. Parking meters and app-paid parking run from about mid-May to mid-September, including weekends and holidays, and are free the rest of the year; confirm current dates and zones before you feed a meter or ignore one. The bandstand programme of free concerts and family nights runs roughly June to Labor Day, mostly in the evenings. Shops, ice cream stands and many restaurants along Garfield Parkway and the boardwalk open late in spring, keep long hours in July and August, cut back to weekends in autumn and in many cases close for the winter. Grocery stores and a few restaurants on Route 1 and Route 26 stay open all year. Confirm any event or restaurant before driving over in the off season.