When did people start hanging out at the beach?

Like so many things, the beach vacation actually rose to popularity in Britain late in the 18th century and spread through the world from there. (This isn't to say people avoided the beach entirely before then, but vacationing at the beach wasn't a cultural phenomenon.)



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The first seaside resorts were opened in the 18th century for the aristocracy, who began to frequent the seaside as well as the then fashionable spa towns, for recreation and health.

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The practice developed from medically-prescribed sea-bathing by British physicians in the 17th and 18th centuries and spread throughout Europe and European colonies. With the advent of affordable air travel seaside resorts developed worldwide into the modern tourism phenomenon.

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Although the culture of vacationing at the beach only really got started in the late 1700s in Europe, as improved transportation made it easier to reach the sea, there is evidence that ancient Greeks indeed did enjoy the country's sandy shores.

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Donkey rides were very popular too. Children also loved building sandcastles, digging big holes and playing in the sea. There were also rock pools to explore and animals and plants to spot that children who lived in the cities never saw at home. A very fashionable thing to do was take a walk along the promenade.

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The practice of sea-bathing developed starting in the mid-1800s into the modern cultural phenomenon of beachgoing. In the 19th century, the introduction of railways led to the further development of seaside resorts and bathing boxes.

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We're naturally drawn to aquatic hues and people associate this color with qualities like calm, openness, depth and wisdom. We are beginning to learn that our brains are hardwired to react positively to water and that being near it can calm and connect us, increase innovation and insight, and even heal what's broken.

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Looking at the ocean can activate opiate receptors in the brain and release dopamine. Running through clean salt water at the beach is good for your mental and physical health. People the world over favor the color blue, perhaps because it is associated with clear skies and clean water.

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The sunlight soaking into our skin at the beach spikes our bodies' production of Vitamin D and serotonin, releasing all kinds of feel-good chemicals in our brains.

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In the 1600s, doctors in Great Britain began to prescribe both drinking and bathing in seawater--cold seawater--as being good for one's health. Beach-going soon became the rage for affluent Europeans from the English Channel to the Baltic Sea. But the upper classes didn't swim, they merely took a quick plunge.

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The first public beach in the United States opened on 12 July 1896, in the town of Revere, Massachusetts, with over 45,000 people attending on the opening day.

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What is the oldest public beach in the United States? Celebrated as the first public beach in America, Revere Beach, with its noisy arcades and famous fried food, served as a cheap and easy escape from downtown Boston for over a century.

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