The 13 Best Beaches of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach — Find Your Beach
Overview of Gulf Shores Alabama Beache
The four primary beaches along the Alabama Gulf Coast are Gulf Shores, Gulf State Park, Orange Beach, and the Fort Morgan Peninsula. Perdido Key State Park in Florida is also close by, but this article focuses on the other side of the Flora-Bama line.
Gulf Place (Gulf Shores Main Public Beach) is the first beach you’ll reach coming in from Highway 59 and has everything you’d expect from a top-notch beach.
At 10 miles long and about a 1/2 mile wide, Little Lagoon isn’t all that little. Little Lagoon Pass is where the lagoon empties into the Gulf, about 3-miles west of Gulf Place. Little Lagoon Park provides parking and restrooms, as well as beach and lagoon access, making this beach a one-stop outdoor destination.
There are seven public beach access points between Gulf Place and Little Lagoon Pass (2nd St, 4th St, 5th St, 6th St, 10th St, 12th St, and 13th St). They all have at least one restroom, and the bolded points have public parking available.
Immediately to the east of Gulf Shores is Gulf State Park, and the first beach you’ll reach at the Gulf State Park Pier. It’s the second-largest pier on the Gulf of Mexico before Hurricane Sally collapsed a 200′ section near the end of the structure. It’s been reopened and is still Alabama’s only public fishing pier on the Gulf.
Branyon Beach is in Gulf State Park in between the pier and pavilion. It has extremely limited parking and no amenities. If you manage to get in, the sand is lovely, and you don’t have to worry about crowds. The question is, how do you get to Branyon Beach?
The Gulf State Park Pavilion is a 100,000 square foot open-air beach pavilion perfect for beach weddings. However, the typical users are families looking to enjoy the simple pleasures of an uncrowded, natural beach with plenty of room to spread out.
Orange Beach is just to the east of Gulf State Park, and the first beach you reach is Romar Beach. I’ll be honest, with so many beach access points, Romar Beach is not my favorite. The beach itself is very nice and an exquisite destination for beach condo rentals.
Cotton Bayou is a much better alternative than Romar Beach for public access in Orange Beach. It has about three times as many parking spaces, flush toilets, and showers, for starters. You can also grab a snow cone at Paradise Snow in season.
There was a time when I thought that Perdido Pass separated Alabama Point on the west side and Florida Point on the east, but that would be too easy.
‘Alabama Point’ matches the popular descriptions of a 6000-foot wide white sandy beach with boardwalks that leads through the dunes to the ocean.
The following four entries in our Gulf Shores Beach Guide are located on the Fort Morgan Peninsula. There are about 13-miles of beaches on the peninsula with limited access, no lifeguards, and no beach flag warning system at these beaches.
Even though Pine Beach is technically in Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, most people think of Mobile Street Beach when they think of the beaches in the Fort Morgan area because of the easy access.
Alabama common law states that all beaches below the mean high tide line are public property. They also allow public access points along the coast, but that doesn’t always translate to public parking.
Historic Fort Morgan sits at the tip of the Fort Morgan Peninsula at the mouth of the 413 sq-mile Mobile Bay. The water flow in and out of the massive bay creates dangerous currents that swimmers need to be aware of.