New England's beaches come with something extra: a long tradition of seaside boardwalks, from carnival-buzzy promenades to lonely wooden paths crossing windswept dunes. A recent roundup highlights eight of the best, spread across every coastal state in the region — with Cape Cod, unsurprisingly, taking a large share.
In Maine, Old Orchard Beach — under half an hour from Portland — is the postcard pick, with its colourful pier, golden sand and lobster rolls. It's the only New England boardwalk to make Reader's Digest's list of America's 20 best beach boardwalks.
Rhode Island plays it differently. The 3.5-mile Cliff Walk in Newport threads between Gilded Age mansions and crashing Atlantic surf; only about half is true boardwalk, the rest a rugged shoreline trail, but the architecture-plus-ocean combo is hard to beat. New Hampshire, with just 18 miles of coastline, makes the most of what it has at Hampton Beach — a nostalgic strip of saltwater taffy, arcades and fried food beside one of America's cleanest beaches.
Massachusetts claims three entries. The historic Sandwich Boardwalk, first built in 1875 at the elbow of Cape Cod, crosses dunes and wetlands and has been rebuilt repeatedly after storm damage. Yarmouth's Bass Hole Boardwalk (also called Gray's Beach) is only a quarter-mile long, but its straight run over the marsh creates a horizon-to-infinity effect, with sandbars and wildlife appearing at low tide. At Crane Beach in Ipswich, a dunes boardwalk crosses fragile salt marsh to famous 'singing' sands — squeaky underfoot, and a place where lucky winter walkers may spot a snowy owl.
Connecticut bookends the list with two Long Island Sound walks. Silver Sands State Park in Milford has a 1.3-mile accessible boardwalk with views of Charles Island, a bird sanctuary reachable at low tide across a exposed sandbar — outside nesting season only. And Niantic Bay Boardwalk in East Lyme runs just over a mile between Cini Park and Hole-in-the-Wall Beach, lined with roughly 200 benches and known for fiery sunsets when storm clouds roll in.
Why it matters: boardwalk season isn't just summer. Several of these paths are at their most atmospheric in the shoulder months, when crowds thin, shorebirds return and you can walk a winter beach without freezing out. They also suit travellers who like scenery with structure — a defined route, places to sit, and food or a town nearby — rather than open dune hiking. Birders should aim for Silver Sands and Crane Beach; families wanting arcades and taffy will head for Old Orchard or Hampton; anyone after a walk with a history lesson attached gets Newport's Cliff Walk.
One practical note from the list itself: not all of these are wooden planks. Some are paved, some elevated, some flat, some rough — so check which suits strollers, wheelchairs or bikes before you go. And a couple (Crane, Silver Sands) cross protected habitats, so staying on the path is part of the deal.
Story via Islands.