Van Buren Park Beach is the small sand beach inside Van Buren Park, a 101-acre park run by Van Buren Charter Township's Parks Department on the north shore of Belleville Lake. The lake is a 1,270-acre reservoir on the Huron River, formed in 1925 when the French Landing Dam was built, and it runs about 8 miles through the middle of the township. The beach sits at the south edge of the park facing across the water, roughly 2 miles west of downtown Belleville. Wikipedia describes it as the only public swimming area on the lake.

The park entrance is on the South I-94 Service Drive between Belleville Road and Rawsonville Road, just south of the freeway. A park road winds down to lots near the playground and restrooms, and a separate road drops down the slope to the beach. The township's 2022 to 2026 parks plan admits that this road is rough and the slope is steep, and it lists repairing the beach road, adding guardrails and stabilizing the eroding shoreline as goals. An ADA pathway to the lake was built in 2005, and accessible parking and signs were added in 2009, when the beach was also resanded.

The swim area itself is modest: a short strip of sand that park users in the township's own survey called small and hard to reach. According to township police, a walkway leads from the beach out to a sandbar where the water is roughly knee to waist deep, but the bottom drops off into deeper water if you stray from it. Belleville Lake reaches about 30 feet at its eastern end and is shallower to the west, toward the park. None of the township pages mention lifeguards, so plan on swimming unguarded and keep children within reach.

Entry is not free. The township charges a vehicle entry fee at Van Buren Park. Under the township's fee schedule a daily pass is $6 for Van Buren Township residents and $8 for everyone else, an annual pass is $18 or $24, and seniors 65 and over pay $3 or $4 a day. Active-duty service members and veterans get in free with ID. Park hours are 10 AM to dusk Monday through Friday and 8 AM to dusk on Saturday and Sunday.

Know the hazards before you go in. In August 2012 two adults drowned after wading back from the sandbar in the dark during a power outage. They were found in about 8 feet of water some 850 feet from the beach. Stay on the sandbar route, don't swim after dark and don't go far from shore. Water quality is the other issue. The township closed the beach in August 2016 after high E. coli test results and said it would stay closed until retesting cleared it, and late-summer algae blooms on Belleville Lake are tested and posted when they occur. Skip a swim for a day or two after heavy rain, and check for posted signs or call the parks office at 734-699-8921.

The rest of the park has picnic areas and three rentable pavilions, grills, a playground, a basketball court, a community garden, a sledding hill and wooded hiking trails. The University of Michigan has a boathouse at the southeast end of the park, near the beach. A township project to restore or relocate the beach is listed in the parks plan but has no firm date, so the layout may change in coming seasons.