Seawall & Bulkhead Guide: Dewey Beach, DE

Two Shorelines, Two Different Engineering Problems

A seawall and a bulkhead are built to solve different problems, and Dewey Beach is one of the few markets on this site where a reader might reasonably need to think about both. A seawall (or, more often on an open ocean coast, a dune reinforced with sand fencing and beach grass) is built to absorb or block direct wave energy coming off the open Atlantic. A bulkhead is a different kind of structure entirely: typically timber, vinyl, or steel sheet piling, built mainly to retain soil and hold a stable edge along calmer, more sheltered water, such as a bay, canal, or marina frontage, rather than to stop pounding surf.

Because Dewey Beach is only about a mile long and two blocks wide, its ocean side and its bay side are close enough that the same town, and sometimes the same block, can have both kinds of shoreline exposure to think about. That is not the case in most single-shoreline beach towns, where the choice of structure type is dictated by which single body of water a property faces. Anyone evaluating a Dewey Beach property should first identify which side of the strip the property actually fronts, since that determines which type of structure, which wave and current conditions, and which section of state permitting review actually applies.

The Bay Side Is Not Hypothetical: Real Waterfront Infrastructure Already Exists

The bay side of Dewey Beach is not just a theoretical second shoreline. Rehoboth Bay frontage in town already supports real, current waterfront businesses, including the Rusty Rudder at 113 Dickinson Street, a bayfront restaurant and bar with boat-in docking at Ruddertowne. Boat-in docking of that kind depends on some combination of bulkheading, piling, and bank stabilization to keep the shoreline edge and the docks themselves usable, which confirms that bay-side shoreline hardening is a real, present feature of Dewey Beach's built environment, not a speculative concern.

That said, this research did not identify the specific bulkhead structure, materials, permit history, or cost behind the Rusty Rudder's docking or any other named bay-side property in town. The point here is narrower and more honest: bay-facing waterfront development of the kind that requires bulkheading clearly exists in Dewey Beach, so it is a legitimate question for a bay-side property owner to raise, even though this page cannot attach it to one confirmed structure.

A Town Younger Than Some of Its Own Shoreline Decisions

One detail worth keeping in mind when researching any existing structure in Dewey Beach: the town itself was not incorporated until 1981, as "The Commissioners of Dewey Beach," even though the location had appeared on maps as far back as 1868. That means any shoreline hardening that went in before 1981, on either the ocean or the bay side, was built before there was a local town government or a local permitting process to review it. A structure that predates incorporation would have been subject to whatever county or state rules existed at the time, not to any Dewey Beach-specific review, which is one more reason a property owner should not assume an older structure's history is on file with the town itself.

What This Research Did Not Find, and Where to Get a Real Answer

This research did not turn up a confirmed, named seawall or bulkhead structure tied to a specific Dewey Beach parcel, nor a permit history or a construction or repair cost figure for any such structure in town. Given how easy it would be to hand a reader a wrong structure, a wrong permit status, or an invented cost to plan around on a piece of ground this small and this valuable, none of that is guessed at here.

What can be said with confidence is who to ask. The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), through its Shoreline and Waterway Management program, regulates shoreline armoring, bulkheads, and seawalls along Delaware's coast generally, on both the ocean and the bay sides. That is the right first call for current permitting rules that would apply to a Dewey Beach property, whichever side of the strip it sits on. For anything specific to a given lot, given Dewey Beach's dual ocean-and-bay exposure on such a narrow footprint, the sounder next step is a licensed Delaware coastal engineer, who can assess which side (or both) actually needs attention and what structure type and permitting path fit that specific property. Nothing on this page is engineering, permitting, or legal advice.