A Day at Picturesque, Historic Betterton Beach

Summer keeps going as warm weekends entice Marylanders who want to go on vacation to the sun, sand, and waves of Ocean City and the beaches nearby… but traffic doesn’t always. Yet, Betterton Beach, the “Jewel of the Chesapeake,” is hidden less than an hour from the Bay Bridge on the Eastern Shore. This small, historic town is known as the “Jewel of the Chesapeake,” and it has a large beach on the Bay that doesn’t have jellyfish and is great for swimming, sunbathing, fishing, and relaxing in a quiet, beautiful setting.

In recent years, most of us have become all too familiar with how frustrating it is to stop and go on the Bay Bridge as crowds of tourists slowly make their way to the beach.

Once drivers get over the bridge, they have to get ready to drive for at least two more hours before they finally get “down the ocean, hon.”

Betterton Beach is at the mouth of the Sassafras River on the upper Chesapeake Bay in Kent County, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore of the Bay and Delmarva Peninsula in the Eastern United States.

39°22′4′′N 76°3′39′′W are the GPS coordinates (39.367863, -76.060877).

The US Census Bureau says that the town has a total area of 1.00 square mile (2.59 km2), of which 0.99 square miles (2.56 km2) are land and 0.01 square miles (0.25 km2) are water.

Historic Summer Hot Spot

Betterton Beach use to be a small fishing village and a port for local farming. It is at the end of a long, farm-cover peninsula where the Sassafras River flows into the Bay.

From the end of the 1800s to the 1940s, the town became known as “Maryland’s Foremost Bayside Resort,” which was a proud claim.

Betterton Beach became a popular beach resort because it was a key stop for ships going up the Chesapeake Bay through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. This meant that steamboat tourists from Baltimore and Philadelphia came there all the time.

At least eight steamships went to Betterton every day. Some of them brought as many as 2,400 people to a town of only 200–300 people. Hotels offer comfortable rooms, ballrooms with live music, daily fishing trips with watermen, and the freshest seafood and produce from the Eastern Shore.

In the 1930s, the town’s tourism industry start to slow down because of the Great Depression, a drop in steamboat travel, and the building of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952, which made it easier to get to Ocean City’s newly air-condition beachfront hotels and motels.

As the number of steamboats went down, so did the number of tourists.

Hotels and boarding houses were torn down or turn into something else. Some of them were turn into grand homes that are now on the National Register of Historic Places because they are great examples of Victorian architecture.

Over time, this once-bustling tourist spot went back to being quiet, but only for a short time.

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How a beach town was born

In 1976, Kent County bought the bayfront land with money from the state. They tore down the remaining buildings and turn the beach area into a public park.

The changes this rebirth has made are impressive. Betterton Beach is now a five-acre, landscape, family-friendly waterfront park with a beautiful beach (300 feet of swimming frontage and 700 feet of shoreline access) with a bathhouse, boardwalk, shady picnic pavilion on a bluff overlooking the beach, fishing jetty, and public pier with boating opportunities.

Because fresh river water flows in, the salinity is much lower. This means that beachgoers can cool off in Betterton’s water all summer without having to worry about painful sea nettles, which are a problem for swimmers in the Bay.

As an added bonus, the bottom is sandy and firm and gently slopes down for a truly relaxing experience. Sweetening the deal, access to the beach and parking are completely free!

Still Pond is three miles away and has the closest general store. However, Betterton has two restaurants that are open all year. On the main road into town, you pass the first. It’s a family-friendly restaurant with great sandwiches, burgers, and pizza.

There is also a restaurant across the street from the beach park. It has a bar and a deck where you can eat while looking out at the beautiful northern Chesapeake Bay.

After a relaxing day at the beach and a good meal, you can walk up the hill to the old church that is now the Betterton Heritage Museum. It is on the hilltop above the beach.

The museum is open on weekends from 1 to 3 pm between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It has a collection of decoys made by the world-famous local craftsman Charles “Speed” Joiner and a remodelled fisherman’s shanty that you can walk through.

You might meet “Candy,” who was the mayor of Betterton for 28 years and help the town get back on its feet. She now volunteers at the museum with her sister and brother-in-law.

Cottages along the Sassafras River can be rent for longer stays. Each cottage has its own beach and pier.

If you want to visit other nearby historic towns, Chestertown is only 12 miles away, and Chesapeake City is only 40 minutes away. There are restaurants and nice bed and breakfasts along the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in Chesapeake City.

Just around the corner is more fun.

Location is the most important thing, and as nice as Betterton Beach is, there are lots of other places to see just around the corner.

Along the Sassafras River, Turner’s Creek Park and Sassafras Natural Resource Management Area are only a few minutes away.

Turner’s Creek use to be a busy shipping port, but now only a half dozen crabbing and fishing boats live in its natural harbour. It also has a lagoon where fields of floating lotuses bloom in July and August, making it a huge draw for paddlers.

On land, there is still a granary where a supply store for Washington’s troops at Valley Forge use to be.

A few hundred yards up the hill from the granary and landing is the Kent Museum, which has a lot of old things in it.

Along the miles of trails and old roads in the 143-acre Sassafras Natural Resource Management Area, there are beautiful views at every turn.

Freshwater and saltwater ponds, wood ravines, farm fields, forests, and the river itself are all great places to see waterfowl and many other species. In the forest, there are trails for hiking, mountain biking, and riding horses, and bird watchers will find a surprising mix of songbirds, waterfowl, and raptors.

For people who are interest in history, the Knock’s Folly Visitor Center has displays about the farming community, the local Native American Tockwogh tribe, Captain John Smith’s visit, and the Sassafras’s rich natural history and wildlife.

All of this is less than ten minutes away by car from Betterton Beach. Even better, rent a kayak or canoe and paddle the Sassafras River Water Trail between Betterton Landing and Turners Landing for a truly beautiful trip.

Historic District of Betterton

The buildings in the Betterton Historic District are all made of wood and have a style from the Victorian era. Many of the homes, hotels, and cottages in the district were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s to house steamboat passengers.

Some of the most interesting buildings in the district are the hotels and boarding houses that served steamboat passengers. There are also several churches and summer cottages from the time when passenger steamboats on the Chesapeake Bay were very popular.

History Of Betterton Beach

Betterton’s history has been written down since the 1600s. In 1664, the Fishall Patent was given, which led to the name “Fish Hall.” The house at 104 Ericsson Avenue has bricks in the foundation that were made in 1698. Edward Crew rent Fish Hall in 1715 and changed the name to Crews Landing.

Crews Landing was a small fishing village for the next 100 years, and then it became a port where local farm goods were shipped by boat to cities.

Richard Townsend Turner, a Quaker, name the town “Betterton” after his wife Elizabeth Betterton’s family in 1851. Both the Turner pier and the Ericsson pier made it possible for ships to get to the town.

Over time, people in the town started renting rooms to travellers, salesmen, and shippers who came to the beach. Turner built the Rigbie Hotel, which was torn down in August 1986. Crownhart built the Belmont Hotel (destroy by fire in 1956).

These were joined by hotels like the Betterton, the Chesapeake, the Country Cousin, the Southern, and many others.

Middle Atlantic city visitors and vacationers came by steamboat from downtown Baltimore’s “The Basin” (now Inner Harbor) and Philadelphia on excursion cruises like the Old Bay Line (Baltimore Steam Packet Company, 1840-1962) and the competing Ericsson Line (and others, like the Wilson Line later).

The Ericsson Line was named after John Ericsson, a Swedish-American who lived from 1803 to 1889 and came up with the “screw propeller” and “Ironclad” warships during the Civil War to make ships go faster and use less fuel.

Because of this invention, steamboats could be made with a beam narrow enough to fit through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which had just opened and was only 25 feet wide at the time (it was later widened and improved). This canal connected the upper Chesapeake with the Delaware River and Bay.

Betterton was a natural stop for boats going through the canal, and the boom in steamboat traffic along the East Coast of the United States brought growth and prosperity to the town.

Before the turn of the 20th century, Betterton’s piers had 11 scheduled steamboat landings every day. Most people think that Betterton’s heyday was from 1918 to 1930, when more and more restaurants, taverns, dance halls, bowling alleys, and amusement arcades opened up, giving the town a reputation as a pleasure resort.