Beulah Public Beach sits at the far east end of Crystal Lake, a short walk downhill from the few blocks that make up downtown Beulah. The Village of Beulah owns the beach and the park behind it, and the village charges nothing for either. There is no gate, no entry fee, no day pass and no resident sticker. Parking is free too. Cars pull in along the lakefront street beside the sand, there is a lot next to Beulah Village Park, and the village points visitors to the public lot behind its own offices on Commercial Street. The one parking rule that catches people out is a winter rule, no overnight street parking from November 1 to April 1, and it has nothing to do with swimming season.

The water is why people come. Crystal Lake covers roughly 9,700 acres and runs about eight miles long by two and a half wide, averaging near 70 feet deep and dropping to 165 in the middle. It is an oligotrophic lake, low in nutrients, which is why it holds that pale turquoise color over a sand bottom and why you can stand chest deep and still count your toes. At the Beulah end the bottom shelves out slowly, so the marked swim area stays shallow and warm a long way from shore and small children can wade without dropping off. Past the buoy line it gets cold in a hurry.

Several hundred feet of sand run along the shore, backed by a beach house, a playground, restrooms, tennis and pickleball courts, and a pavilion with grills and picnic tables under old shade trees. No lifeguard works the beach. The Betsie Valley Trail, the 22 mile rail trail between Frankfort and Thompsonville, passes right by on its way through the village, and the Village Park is the obvious place to get on or off it.

Two rules are worth knowing before you load the car. Dogs are not allowed on the beach at all, and they are not allowed on the Betsie Valley Trail either, though they are fine on a leash elsewhere in the village. Alcohol, fires and fireworks are all banned on the beach and in the parks.

The Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department samples the water weekly from June through Labor Day and posts results to Michigan's BeachGuard system and to the village's own beach updates page. Check the most recent one before you go. Beulah Beach drew repeated E. coli advisories from 2013 onward, and the village won a grant from Michigan EGLE to fix the stormwater behind them. Work on underground retention chambers, rain gardens and inlet infiltration began after Labor Day 2025 around the pavilion park and Crystal Avenue. Recent weekly postings have come back Level 1, satisfactory for full body contact.

The beach itself is the product of a failure. In 1873 a company cut a channel meant to connect Crystal Lake to Lake Michigan for shipping. The plan did not work, but it drained the lake well below its old level and left a wide ring of sand around the whole shoreline. That accident created the resort shore and the village of Beulah along with it. A marker set in 1978 by the people of Benzie County stands at the original water line near the beach, and it gives you a clear sense of how far the lake fell. One caution on the map: this is the village beach at the lake's east end, not the state boating access site out at Mollineaux Road near Frankfort and not the Railroad Point Natural Area on the north shore.