Until this summer, the Driftwood Drive access ended where the beach used to start. Beachgoers told First Coast News that reaching the ocean meant crossing dunes and wading through standing water. The replacement opened in July 2026. It is a 967-foot elevated boardwalk, raised three feet above the sand and about five times the length of the old boardwalk.
A few hundred yards south at Massengale Park, Glynn County has applied for something similar. The two floating bridges that East Beach regulars have used for the last few summers would come out. In their place would go a raised crosswalk 676 feet long, wide enough for ADA and emergency vehicle access. These are the first walkways on St. Simons built because the beach moved away from the parking lot. The sand keeps coming.
The Sand Moved First
East Beach is accreting, which means it is gaining sand and pushing seaward. In its permit application to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the county attributes the problem directly to "continued accretion on East Beach." That growth has created a tidal pool and wetland inside the dune field, between the old end of the access and the dry sand.
The coastal advocacy group One Hundred Miles traces the slough to 2022, when strong storms reshaped the shore. It started as a slice of water above the high tide line at the Massengale Park entrance. By fall 2025, The Brunswick News placed the pool complex south of the Coast Guard Station, between the Neptune Road and Driftwood Drive beach access points.
Every access decision on this stretch since then has followed from that one fact. The beach keeps gaining sand on the far side of the water, so any path to the dry sand has to cross more ground than it did before.
Three Answers to the Same Pool
Over four years the county has tried three different ways to get people across the slough. Each one says something about how the problem was understood at the time.
- Floating bridges, 2023. The county installed modular floating bridges across the pools. The project won the Community Program Award at the Georgia City-County Management Association's spring conference. State permissions issued from 2023 onward authorized a series of these temporary crossings. Two still span the East Beach tidal pool seaward of Massengale Park and the King and Prince.
- Filling the pool, 2025. The county asked federal and state regulators for permission to dredge nearly four acres of beach sand into the tidal pool complex. Longleaf Consulting wrote the project description for the county. It cited drowning risk, contact with potentially contaminated water, and emergency vehicle access around Massengale Park.
- Permanent boardwalks, 2026. After the fill plan fell apart, the county switched to elevated structures that cross over the wetland and leave it in place. Driftwood was built first. Massengale is in permitting.
The 2025 fill application is the reason the 2026 structures are as long as they are.
Why the Slough Stayed
The argument over filling the pool came down to two readings of the same water. Kat Montgomery, South Coast Advocate for One Hundred Miles, told The Brunswick News that the pools had become wetland habitat used by protected species such as piping plovers and monarch butterflies. In a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers she wrote that "East Beach has seen tremendous dune and native vegetation growth on the seaward facing side of the slough." Her organization proposed dune fencing, native plantings, water quality monitoring, signs, and crosswalks over the sloughs.
Scott McQuade, executive director of the Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau, saw a safety problem. In the same Brunswick News report, he said the pools were at least waist deep and deeper in places. He also pointed out that summer lifeguards are stationed between the ocean and the pools, facing the ocean. He agreed that some beach management practices work and gave dune fencing as an example. It has helped rebuild the dunes at Coast Guard Station Beach over the past several years.
The Brunswick News later reported that county officials had dropped the fill plan after state and federal agencies raised concerns about dunes, intertidal zones, and federally protected birds, and the pool had developed into vegetated wetland. Resden Talbert, the county's director of capital development and procurement, said sluices can change quickly and sometimes fill in with sand on their own, but he called the pool a safety issue. County Manager Bill Fallon summed up the change this way:
"While we are disappointed in not being able to get the permitting required for our original plan, we are still able to implement a solution that meets our public safety needs and provides the improved beach access the community has asked for."
After that, the slough was treated as part of the beach, and the walkways would have to be built around it.
Every Measurement Got Longer
Because the county now builds over the wetland, each structure has to reach the sand on the far side. The numbers grew at each stage of planning:
- Old Driftwood access: a 195-foot boardwalk plus a 75-foot landing, 270 feet in all, according to the state permit notice.
- Driftwood as first announced: about 550 feet across the wetlands and the northern part of the tidal pool, according to the county's plan as The Brunswick News reported it.
- Driftwood as built: 967 feet, with access on both sides of the street, at a cost just under $700,000 paid from the county's Multi-Year Capital Projects Fund.
- Massengale as first described: about 580 feet long and 10 to 12 feet wide.
- Massengale in the August 2026 state notice: 13 by 636 feet.
- Massengale in the updated notice: 13 by 676 feet.
Several reasons are mixed together here. Some numbers count only the part of the structure inside state jurisdiction, and some are early estimates. The updated Massengale notice also says the original drawings had mislabeled the jurisdiction line and left out part of the regulated area. Still, every figure goes in the same direction. To reach dry sand on East Beach, a structure has to clear more dune field and slough than it did a few years ago.
Massengale Is Next, on Paper
The updated state notice gives Massengale regulars the most concrete picture of what is planned. The existing Beach Access No. 24 at the north end of the park would be removed completely. The new crosswalk would sit at least 36 inches above the sand along its full length and end in a ramp perpendicular to the shoreline. On the landward side of the tidal pool, pedestrian ramps and stairs would branch off both sides. At that point the structure would be about 41 feet wide, the widest anywhere on its length.
Two details matter to anyone who parks there. Construction equipment would be staged at the southeast corner of the Massengale Park parking lot, and all construction access would come from the park itself. The county also dropped its request for a second crosswalk at Arnold Road, Beach Access No. 23, so Massengale is now the only crossing in the application.
The public comment period ended September 11, 2026. The notice does not give a construction schedule. When the fill plan was dropped, the county said no work would begin until every required permit was in hand. Until then, the floating bridges are still the way across at Massengale.
One Block North, a Street Changes Hands
Access around the King and Prince is changing as well, for a separate reason. On October 1, Glynn County commissioners voted 6 to 1 to abandon Downing Street, the public street in front of the hotel's main entrance, which made it private, The Islander reported. Architect Robert Ussery spoke for the request. He said its purpose was to improve the hotel's entrance, which currently has a very small porte-cochère, and that the basic traffic pattern would stay the same.
Commissioner Sammy Tostensen asked about gating and about where beachgoers would park. According to The Islander, Ussery replied that the hotel has no intention of gating the road and that Arnold Road and Neptune would remain public roads with beach access. He said the master plan would include a cul-de-sac at the east end of Neptune, new public parking on Neptune, and more clearly marked parking on Beachview, where people already park informally. Commissioner Bob Duncan noted that public beach access exists on both the north and south sides of the hotel. Ussery said the abandonment would not affect either one.
The street vote is final. The parking and cul-de-sac are plans the hotel's representative described, and they will take shape through the master plan he mentioned. Together with the Massengale crosswalk, they make the blocks between Neptune Road and Massengale Park the part of East Beach most likely to look different by next summer.
If you're weighing a home near East Beach, or you own one and want to know how the Driftwood boardwalk and the proposed Massengale crossing might affect your daily walk to the sand, Pitts Wilson is happy to walk those blocks with you and talk through it. Schedule a free consultation.
