In 30s, 40s and 50s, ‘Urbanna Beach’ was town’s summertime place to be

(Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on Urbanna swimming holes.)

The old “Urbanna Beach” that was located just down the shore from today’s Urbanna Town Marina was the place to go in the summertime in the 1930s, 40s and 50s!

The beach was the place where youngsters first learned that the crunching of sand “ain’t” so bad in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; where they learned to swim from the dedicated hands of the late Bill Jones, who taught Red Cross swimming lessons to generations of town children; and where they were often covered in mud and sand as a cure for the sting from a stinging nettle.

Urbanna Town Council recently voted to build a $1.1 million swimming pool at Taber Park to provide safe, recreational swimming for town citizens, visitors and the community.

The town has long been a supporter of monitored swimming holes and in the 1930s entered into a public/private partnership to establish a town public beach located on the Ryland/Pinder/Bingham properties down the shore from what is today the Urbanna Town Marina.

The creation of a town swimming beach was to provide a safe place for children and families to swim. It was also to encourage visitors to come to Urbanna. Postcards were made showing the beach and promoting the recreational fun in the sun on Urbanna Creek — a day of swimming, basking in the sun on the sand beach, afterwards enjoying a 35-cent banana split at Marshall’s Drug Store, and maybe an overnight stay at the Urbanna Beach Hotel where fried spot, cornbread and fresh grown tomatoes were on the summertime menu in the hotel’s restaurant. The town beach was just a short walk down the shore from the hotel.

Recollections

L.M. Carlton, 90, of Urbanna recalls that in the late 1930s when he was a boy the beach was booming. Carlton grew up on Lord Mott Road and walked to town and to the beach across the footbridge on Perkins Creek and he and his brother Colonel were sometimes driven to the beach by their parents.

“It was certainly a beach in town in the late 1930s,” said Carlton. “The town built a fence around the area going out into the creek and had a platform for jumping and diving.”

“There was netting around the fenced area to keep the stinging nettles out,” he said. “There were also benches placed up on the beach for people to sit or they could lay on their towels on the beach.”

“When I was real small I remember a store building in front of what is today Montague’s marina,” he said. “Before we got to the beach, my mother would pull the car over and we would go behind the old store to change into our bathing suits…”