False Cape State Park
Virginia State Park; A Barrier Spit Between The Atlantic And Back Bay With No Public Vehicle Access, Adjoining Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge · Virginia Beach, Virginia
Four thousand acres of barrier spit running down to the North Carolina line, a mile wide between the Atlantic and Back Bay, and one of the last undeveloped stretches of coast on the eastern seaboard - kept that way by the single fact that governs any visit: you cannot drive here. There is no public road in. Visitors walk or cycle about six miles south through Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, take the park's seasonal tram, or arrive by boat, and that filter is why the beach is empty on an August afternoon while the Virginia Beach oceanfront twenty miles north is solid with people. What is down there rewards the effort: six miles of Atlantic beach with nobody on it, live oak maritime forest behind the dunes, and the ghost of Wash Woods - a settlement founded by survivors of a shipwreck, abandoned in the 1930s, of which a church steeple, a cemetery and some cypress foundations remain in the woods. There are primitive campsites, no shops, no water and no phone signal worth the name.
4001 Sandpiper Road, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23456, United States
Park open daily, generally dawn to dusk, and FREE - but there is no public vehicle access. Reach it on foot or by bicycle about six miles through Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge (which charges its own entrance fee), by the park's SEASONAL Terra Gator tram (booked ahead, limited places, not running all year), or by boat. Back Bay closes its dike trails in the winter waterfowl season, changing the route. Primitive camping by reservation. NO water, NO shop, NO facilities beyond the contact station.
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