Beaches in the United States

Four separate beach countries under one flag. The Atlantic barrier islands run from Cape Cod to Florida as a chain of dune and sandbar. The Gulf coast has the finest quartz sand in the hemisphere and almost no swell. The Pacific northwest is cold, forested and made of driftwood and sea stacks. Hawaii is volcanic, tropical and shares nothing with any of them. Any sentence beginning "American beaches are" is wrong somewhere. The practical consequences are worth stating. Public access is a state matter rather than a federal one: Hawaii and Oregon guarantee it along the whole shore, Florida and the Carolinas do not, and in parts of New England the private frontage runs to the low-water mark. Lifeguard cover is seasonal almost everywhere and absent outside it. And the beach seasons barely overlap — the Gulf is swimmable from March, the Pacific northwest never comfortably, and the Great Lakes and northern Atlantic for about ten weeks. Hurricane season affects the Gulf and Atlantic coasts from June to November, and beach nourishment — pumping sand back on after storms — is a permanent line in the budget of most coastal municipalities on those two shores.

They spread across ten beach worlds, the largest group being three coloured-sand beaches. Together they account for 46 km of shore. · computed from the 14 records below