Miles of Sandy Shore a T Ride Away
Sand Sculpting Festival on America’s oldest public beach
Jonathan Bouchard, from Montreal, won the Revere Beach 2011 sand sculpture contest (and the peoples’ choice award) with “Empty of Turtles.” Photo by Bill Ilott.
One consolation of summer in the city is the Blue Line hop to Revere Beach Reservation, a welcoming stretch of Massachusetts Bay shoreline four miles north of Boston.
The beach once known as the Coney Island of New England remains the people’s beach, its boulevard bustling with stalls selling food from a kaleidoscope of cuisines, its shelters shading visitors of all ethnicities. In 2004, the New England Sand Sculpting Festival was born. Now a national festival that draws participants from all over the world, this year’s event runs from Thursday, July 12, to Sunday, July 15, near the bandstand on Revere Beach Boulevard (between Beach Street and Shirley Avenue).
A public park since 1896, Revere Beach was designed by noted landscape architect Charles Eliot to be “the first to be set aside…for the enjoyment of the common people.”
In the decades since Revere’s historic charms fell into decline—and hit rock bottom with the devastation caused by the notorious Blizzard of ’78—the beach has been completely revived, to the delight of its fans, with restored pavilions, seawalls, and sidewalks. Officially reopened in 1992, Revere Beach was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2004. Revere Beach has a bathhouse, and lifeguards are on duty through September.
Revere Beach Reservation is open year-round from dawn to dusk. To get there by T, take the Blue Line to the Revere Beach or Wonderland station. For more information, call 781-289-3020.
This article was originally published on August 2, 2010; it has been recently updated to include current information.
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