Best Walking Trails in Virginia Beach Parks

Illustrative photo for Best Walking Trails in Virginia Beach Parks — not an actual photo of any specific listed place
Illustrative photo. Photo by Magda Ehlers via Pexels.

How We Picked

Every pick here is tagged "Walking Trails" in our directory — a detail documented on the business or place's own website or listing, not word-of-mouth. We pulled every real, currently-tagged listing across every category it applies to. Details change, so confirm current hours/availability directly with the business before a visit.

The Picks

  1. Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge

    Immediately south of Sandbridge, Back Bay NWR protects thousands of acres of barrier-spit habitat — beach, dunes, maritime forest, and freshwater marsh — that host huge concentrations of migratory waterfowl in winter and shorebirds much of the year.

  2. Beach Garden Park

    An 18-acre surprise a few minutes' drive from the boardwalk: half a mile of paved trail and wooden decking carries walkers over tidal wetlands where herons, egrets, red-winged blackbirds, and osprey are regular sightings.

  3. False Cape State Park

    One of the last undeveloped stretches of the Atlantic coast — and you cannot drive to it.

  4. First Landing State Park

    Virginia's most-visited state park packs a genuine wilderness into the city's northern corner: 20 miles of trails through maritime forest, bald cypress swamp, and dunes, plus 1.5 miles of sandy Chesapeake Bay beach.

  5. Great Neck Park

    Established in 1990, this 70-acre district park sits directly on Lynnhaven Bay in the heart of Great Neck — the neighborhood tucked between the river and First Landing State Park.

  6. Lake Lawson / Lake Smith Natural Area

    A 42-acre wooded preserve in Bayside with an outsized 12,000 feet of shoreline on two connected freshwater lakes — which is why anglers and birders treat it as one of the city's best small parks.

  7. Level Green Park

    Home to the city's first public sprayground, Level Green Park has quickly become a go-to summer stop in the Kempsville area.

  8. Marshview Park

    A hundred acres of woods on Lake Rudee hiding minutes from the Resort Strip, Marshview Park is the Oceanfront area's back-to-nature escape valve.

  9. Mount Trashmore Park

    Virginia Beach's most famous non-beach landmark started as a landfill: opened in 1974 as one of the first parks in the world built on converted waste, Mount Trashmore's main hill rises 60 feet and runs 800 feet long, with a second mound (Encore Hill) beside it.

  10. Pleasure House Point Natural Area

    One hundred eighteen acres of tidal marsh, sandy shore, and maritime forest on the Lynnhaven River just south of the Chesapeake Bay — a rescued piece of waterfront that nearly became a condo development and is now one of the city's best close-in nature walks.

  11. Stumpy Lake Natural Area

    More than 970 acres of undeveloped forest wrap around Stumpy Lake in the city's southwest corner, where bald cypress trees rise straight out of the water along the entrance causeway — the most photographed swamp scenery in Virginia Beach and the city's largest nightly cormorant roost.

  12. West Neck Creek Natural Area

    A 217-acre wooded natural area kept deliberately undeveloped, West Neck Creek borders West Neck Road and Princess Anne Road in the rural southern reach of the city, across from the Municipal Center.

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