The Marsh Boardwalk Has Been Closed Since May. Huntington Beach State Park's Best Season Starts Anyway.

Have you walked out toward the marsh at Huntington Beach State Park lately and found a fence where the boardwalk used to be? You're not imagining it. The Nature Center Marsh Boardwalk has been closed since May 11, 2026, and the park has not posted a reopening date. If you live in Murrells Inlet and treat this park the way most of us do, as the quiet extension of the backyard, that closure is worth understanding before your next walk, because the park you think you know runs on more than one clock, and right now two of those clocks are doing very different things at the same time.

One program winds down this week. Another runs until the end of the year. And in three and a half weeks, the park's biggest weekend of 2026 changes how you pay to get in the gate entirely. None of that shows up if you just glance at the beach and assume the park looks the same as it did in June.

What's Actually Closed, and What Isn't

The boardwalk closure is a real inconvenience if that stretch was your usual route into the marsh, but it is not the same thing as the park being closed. Huntington Beach State Park covers 2,500 acres, and the boardwalk is one access point among several. The state park's own guidance on where to actually see wildlife points people to the causeway instead: alligators show up mainly on the freshwater side, and birds are easiest to spot on the marsh side of the causeway or along the Sandpiper Pond Nature Trail, a two mile out and back that passes over spartina grass and black pluff mud before reaching a saltwater pond with observation towers.

If the boardwalk was part of your regular loop, here's what's still open and walkable:

• Sandpiper Pond Trail, a one mile route each way from the north end parking lot, with the option to continue north along the beach another six miles round trip toward the Murrells Inlet jetty for serious birders
• Kerrigan Trail, a quarter mile interpretive path from the gift shop parking lot, good for a short loop with kids or a quick lunch break walk
• Waccamaw Neck Bikeway, three miles of paved trail inside the park that connects to Share the Road sections running toward Sandy Island Road, meaning you can ride or walk from Murrells Inlet in the direction of Pawleys Island without leaving pavement

None of that requires the boardwalk. The construction has rerouted the walk, not ended it.

The Program That Ends This Week, and the One That Doesn't

This is the part that only matters if you're reading this in the next few days. The park's ranger led alligator walk runs from June 1 through August 31, meeting a few mornings a week at the entrance to Atalaya at 10 a.m. That window closes tomorrow. If you've been meaning to go, this is the last call for 2026.

Compare that to the Wednesday Coastal Birding walk, which meets at the causeway parking lot at 10 a.m. and runs from March 3 all the way through December 31. Same hour, same general idea, completely different shelf life. And running alongside both of those is the naturalist led salt marsh kayaking program, which the park offers weekly from March through October through its concessionaire, Black River Outdoors Center. Preregistration and payment are required, and the park itself does not rent kayaks. If you bring your own, the closest public marsh access is Oyster Landing, about a mile north of the park entrance, and it's worth checking a tide table first since some of the smaller creeks run dry at low water.

Here's how the three line up right now:

The park also hosts its own trail race, the Gator Gauntlet 5K, one more sign that this isn't a static preserve that just sits here waiting for beach season. It has a running schedule, and most of it is easy to miss if you only think of Huntington Beach as the quiet cousin to the busier stretches of sand up the coast.

The Weekend the Math Flips

Every other week of the year, getting into Huntington Beach State Park costs $8 for an adult, $5 for a South Carolina senior, $4 for a youth aged 6 to 15, and nothing for children under 6. Touring Atalaya Castle itself is a separate add on, $2 per person for anyone 6 and older.

For three days in September, that pricing structure disappears entirely. From September 25 through 27, general park admission is waived, and the only ticket that matters is festival admission: $10 for anyone 16 and older, free for everyone 15 and under. It's the one weekend a year where the price of walking through the gate depends on the art show happening inside, not the standard park fee.

This year is the 51st running of the Atalaya Arts and Crafts Festival, held in and around the castle that gives it its name, the former winter home of philanthropist Archer Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Mike Walker, an interpretive ranger at the park, has called it one of the largest and oldest festivals of its kind, and the scale backs that up: more than 100 artists set up inside the castle's rooms and courtyard, alongside food vendors and a live music schedule for this year that includes the Melissa Joiner Duo and Mark McKinney. This year's presenting sponsor is Brookgreen Gardens, the sculpture garden just up the road that Anna Hyatt Huntington helped found.

Gates run Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dogs are not permitted inside the festival, even though the rest of the park allows leashed dogs on the south end of the beach year round. Strollers and wheelchairs can also have a harder time with the castle's uneven courtyard and narrow interior hallways, worth knowing if you're planning to bring either.

After the Tents Come Down

Once the festival wraps on September 27, the next fixed date on the park's 2026 calendar is the Atalaya Sleepover, scheduled for November 14 and 15. It's an overnight program held inside the castle grounds, and it lands well after the crowds thin out, in the stretch of the year locals tend to treat as the park's quieter season.

That's really the shape of this place if you live here year round. The beach draws the visitors. The programs, the trails, and the one weekend when Atalaya takes over the gate are what the park actually offers the people who stay.

I've spent enough time walking clients through what a home's location actually means day to day, not just what a listing sheet says about proximity to the water, to know that a park like this is part of what makes living in Murrells Inlet different from visiting it. Knowing which trail is open this month, which program ends this week, and which weekend flips the whole admission structure is the kind of local detail that doesn't show up on a map. If you're weighing a move here, or already call this stretch of the coast home and want a second set of eyes on your property's value or presentation, I'd welcome the conversation. Let's Connect.