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Padre Island National Seashore

Photo: William L. Farr / CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

🏖️ Beaches

Padre Island National Seashore

Corpus Christi, TX · Texas Gulf Coast

About

This is the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island left in the world, seventy miles of Gulf shore where the paved road ends and the beach simply keeps going. Drive past the last access point and you trade lifeguards and boardwalks for shelling at the tide line, wildflowers in the dunes, and the kind of solitude that is hard to find on an American coast anymore. Come in summer and you can watch park biologists release Kemp's ridley sea-turtle hatchlings, the most endangered sea turtle in the world, scrambling down the sand toward the surf.

Highlights

70 miles of undeveloped Gulf shore, the longest such barrier island on EarthKemp's ridley sea-turtle hatchling releases in summerShelling and beachcombing along the open tide lineDrive-on beach access past the last paved roadDune-backed solitude with no crowds or development

Getting there

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From Pacific cliffs and Hawaiian bays to Outer Banks dunes, Great Lakes sand, and Gulf sugar, these are the beaches across the country worth the drive, the flight, or the ferry. Some you walk a mile to reach, some you take a boat or a ferry, and a few you just pull off the highway and gasp. The best beaches in America, coast to coast to coast.