Pickering Beach: A Lovely Beach That's Eroding Quickly


Pickering Beach has one of the nicest beaches we’ve seen so far along the Delaware Bayshore Byway. I had read that the beach is too full of shells and stones to go in the water. But when we visited, the beach was clean, with few pebbles or shells and none of the mud at some other bayshore beaches. The beach at low tide was wide and a really pleasant walk.

Pickering Beach is also one of Delaware’s horseshoe crab sanctuaries. Horseshoe crabs come ashore here to spawn every May and June, and volunteers come to flip the ones that have been turned upside down by the waves.

Wayfinding sign on horseshoe crabs at Pickering Beach

The community of Pickering Beach is more a hamlet than a town, just a strip of beachfront homes. I wonder how long it will be here. Like other Delaware bayfront communities, the beach vanishes at high tide. But here, unlike some other bayfront communities, many of the homes are very close to the high tide mark, so they can obviously be flooded in storms. We saw several abandoned houses and several attempts by individual homeowners to protect their homes with storm fencing or barriers built of bags of shells.

Storm fencing in front of some Pickering Beach shorefront homes

 
Bags of shells creating a barrier in front of a Pickering Beach house

Sign in front of one Pickering Beach home

I'ts clear that the land under some homes floods at every high tide, not just during storms.

Pickering Beach homes over the high tide line

Before you visit, check Pickering Beach’s tide schedule—you’ll want to visit near low tide. The roads in front of the bayfront houses are private and closed to the public, but there are about seven parking spaces along Pickering Beach Road and a well-marked public access to the beach. As far as we could tell, there are no public restrooms.

Public entrance to Pickering Beach

 

 

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