Wallis Sands State Beach

What makes Wallis Sands stand out is simple: it is wide and it is soft. Where much of the New Hampshire shore is rocky ledge and cobble, this half-mile is fine, pale sand that stays broad even when the tide comes in, so there is always room to stretch out. The bottom slopes out gradually rather than dropping off, which keeps the near-shore water shallow and the waves gentle, the reason it has a long reputation as a family beach.

The town of Rye grew up as a farming and fishing community and later as a summer resort, and Wallis Sands took its name from the Wallis family, early Rye landowners whose name shows up in the town's records going back to the 1700s. For a while it was even known as Swampscott Beach, and a grand Victorian resort called the Ocean House stood nearby until it burned in 1923. Today the cottages and marsh give the area a quiet, lived-in feel rather than a built-up one.

The beach has a working history as well as a leisure one. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Wallis Sands was home to a station of the United States Life-Saving Service, the surfmen who launched into the waves to rescue crews from ships wrecked on this exposed coast, and it later became a United States Coast Guard station before it was discontinued around 1938. The reason for it is easy to understand once you look at the water: the Isles of Shoals and the ledges offshore have claimed plenty of vessels over the centuries.

New Hampshire acquired the land and opened it as a state beach in the 1960s, adding the bathhouse and parking that make it an easy day out today. So a spot that was once about pulling sailors from a dangerous sea is now one of the calmest, most welcoming places on the coast to bring a family.

Look out to sea from Wallis Sands on a clear day and you will see a low cluster of islands about six miles offshore. Those are the Isles of Shoals, nine small islands split between New Hampshire and Maine, with a long and strange history of their own: fishing camps and a poet's colony, a famous 1873 murder, and Star Island's old hotel and conference center still going today. They give the horizon here something to rest on that a plain open ocean beach does not have.

The water is genuine North Atlantic, meaning it is bracing even in August, so this is as much a beach for wading, tide-pool poking, and long walks as it is for a full swim. Lifeguards cover the summer season, and because the shore is open and the currents can be strong, the guarded hours are the time to be in the water with kids.

Wallis Sands is right on Ocean Boulevard, Route 1A, in Rye, an easy detour on the scenic coastal drive that links Portsmouth to the north with Hampton Beach to the south. Parking is in the state beach's large pay lot across the road from the sand, and on warm summer weekends it fills early, so the trick is to come in the morning. In the off season you can often find the beach nearly empty, wind and gulls and a long gray horizon.

Plan on the essentials: the bathhouse has restrooms, showers, and changing rooms, but it is otherwise open sand, so bring water, snacks, and something for shade. Give yourself the afternoon, walk the whole half-mile at low tide, and take a minute to find the Isles of Shoals out on the water. For such a small stretch of coast, New Hampshire packs a lot of ocean into this one wide beach.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.