Cape Henlopen State Park
The Beaches
Cape Henlopen is one of the few places on the East Coast where you can choose your ocean. The park has Atlantic surf on one side and the calmer water of Delaware Bay on the other, and they are about ten minutes apart by car.
That is the single most useful thing to know before you go. If the wind is howling out of the northeast and the ocean side is unswimmable, drive around the cape and the bay side may be flat. It works the other way too.
The Point is closed as you read this. The northern tip shuts every spring for nesting and migrating shorebirds. In 2026 the oceanside beach reopens on 1 September and the bayside on 1 October. The dunes behind the fencing are off limits all year. Full dates and what is open.
Ocean side or bay side
| Ocean side | Atlantic surf, real waves, a wide dune-backed beach. This is where the park's guarded swimming beach is, and where most first-time visitors end up. |
|---|---|
| Bay side | Delaware Bay. Shallower, calmer, warmer, and it shelves out gradually. Better for small children and for anybody who does not want to fight shorebreak. |
Lifeguards work the park's main ocean swimming beach through the summer season, and Delaware has in some years extended coverage into September weekends. The bay-side beaches are not guarded. Season dates move, so check with Delaware State Parks rather than trusting any web page, including this one.
The named places
The swimming beach
The park's main ocean beach, with a bathhouse. Guarded in season. If somebody says "the beach at Cape Henlopen" without qualifying it, this is what they mean.
Deauville Beach
Ocean side, at the southern end of the park just north of Rehoboth Beach. Quieter than the main beach, and there are pickleball courts here.
Herring Point
An elevated ocean overlook with rock groins below it, named after a gun battery. A known surfing spot and a drive-on surf fishing crossing.
Beach Plum Island
A nature preserve on the bay side — the only publicly owned wild beach in Delaware with both dune and marsh habitat. Most of it is closed to protect wildlife, with a section open for surf fishing.
Gordons Pond
The southern end of the park, where a salt pond sits behind the dune line. Trailhead, parking and another drive-on fishing crossing.
The Point
The curved tip of the cape, where the bay meets the ocean. Extraordinary for birds and views — and closed for a good part of the year. See below.
Why The Point closes
The Point is the best bit of the whole cape and you cannot always go there. That is not a failure of planning; it is the point of it.
The Point has closed every March since 1993 to protect beach-nesting and migratory shorebirds — piping plovers, which are federally listed; least terns, which are endangered in Delaware; American oystercatchers; and red knots, which stop here to feed on their way north.
The oceanside nesting habitat reopens on 1 September. The bayside stays shut until 1 October, because southbound migrants are still using it after the nesters have gone.
Red knots are the reason this matters more than it sounds. They fly from the bottom of South America to the Arctic, and Delaware Bay is the refueling stop in the middle. A bird that gets disturbed off the beach here does not simply move along — it may not make the rest of the trip.
The dunes behind the beach
Cape Henlopen has the highest dune system between Cape Cod and the Outer Banks, and the Great Dune behind the ocean beach stands about 80 feet above the Atlantic.
It has not always been that tall. In colonial times it stood around 46 feet and was forested. Tree cutting and fires in the 1800s let the sand loose and the whole dune began walking inland, which earned it the nickname the Galloping Dune. During the Second World War the army added sand and planted it with grass, trees and shrubs to hold it still — because by then there was a fort buried in it, and a tower on top of it.
The campground →
What kind of sites there are, and what the cabins are actually like.
How the park fits together →
Where everything is in relation to everything else, and how long the trails are.