Bayside Landing
Bayside Landing is nestled into the raw and beautiful naturescape of the New Point Comfort Natural Area Preserve in Bavon. This area is known to be one of the last bird migratory zones on the Atlantic Flyway and popular among bird enthusiasts.
At this one acre property, the L. Wayne Hudgins Pavilion sits on acres of marshland along the Mobjack Bay. Looking southeast, you'll see the New Point Comfort Lighthouse about a mile off in the distance. This lighthouse is the 4th oldest lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay and was lovingly restored and preserved by the community over the years. At night you can see the navigation light flashing over the horizon.
Come to Bayside Landing to enjoy a picnic at the facility, sunrise and sunsets, birdwatching and nature viewing. Here you'll enjoy the naturally biodiverse ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay estuary. Take a look at the fascinating history of this site below, and click on Facility Guidelines to learn how to reserve this site for a private event.
Bayside Landing
View Bayside Landing Facility Guidelines Here
Open Daily Sunrise to Sunset
Views of New Point Comfort Lighthouse
Waterfront Pavilion See Facility Rental
Limited Parking Area
Bird Watching & Incredible Sunrises
This site is not accessible by water. To visit by road, take Route 14 East past Mathews Court House. After 8 miles, take a left at the fork in Bavon staying on Route 14. Turn right onto Old Bayside Drive. Travel ¼ mile. Bayside site is straight ahead.
History of Bayside
Standing in such a peaceful setting looking out over the vast Chesapeake Bay, it’s hard to imagine that, at one time, Bayside was a bustling center of maritime activity.
Bayside Wharf, located in the New Point area of Mathews, was established by the New Point Development Corporation (WC Handy, JE Davis, and WA Snow) in 1912 as a trading port for goods to/from Norfolk and Baltimore. The Wharf consisted of a ½ mile-long pier jetting out into the Chesapeake Bay, an ice/fish-packing plant run by Lionel Haywood in the mid 1900’s, a small store on the land that sold food, drinks and items watermen would use and even a dance hall where locals would come for entertainment.
The Wharf pier had a narrow-gauge railroad track with a cargo carrier that pulled the fresh fish from the boats to the ice plant onshore, where men would pack the fish with ice in crates of 100 lbs., then send the packed fish crates from the land back to the steamships in order to carry them to Baltimore and Norfolk.
Bayside had a tumultuous “life”. It burned twice, once in March of 1931 and again in March of 1933. That same year, like most wharves in the area, Bayside sustained a great deal of damage in the Storm of ’33, when residents saw a 12-foot wall of water overtake Mathews County. Before that time, there was another New Point wharf, called Beach Wharf, located very near the New Point Lighthouse and lightkeeper’s house. The Storm of ’33 took the house, Beach wharf and all the land around the lighthouse leaving it on an island, as it is seen today.
Unlike Beach Wharf, Bayside was rebuilt and remained in operation until Hurricane Hazel, in October 1954, wiped out the ice plant, store, dance hall and ½ mile-long commercial pier, the remnants of which are still there today. The Mathews Land Conservancy’s 16’ x 24’ raised pavilion sits on the footprint of the wharf overlooking the historic New Point Lighthouse
Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater
Thirty-five million years ago, near what is now the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, a 2-mile wide meteorite struck the continental shelf of eastern North America and blasted through the water column and thousands of feet of sediment and into the underlying continental crust. The resulting structure, now buried beneath younger sediments, is a 53-mile wide, filled crater, the sixth largest known crater on earth, centered below Cape Charles, VA. The CB crater is a unique feature in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Its location corresponds to an unusually large extent of salty groundwater that significantly affects the use of groundwater resources in southeastern Virginia.
Bayside Landing is a perimeter site of the inner-basin margin of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater. As part of the United States Geological Survey’s investigation of the crater, four drill holes were completed at Bayside Landing during the summer and fall of 1991. Core samples were taken from 170 feet to its greatest depth of 2,390 feet. The first hole drilled remains in use today as a water-level monitoring well by the VA Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Geological Survey.
A program entitled The Chesapeake Meteorite: Message from the Past was done at Bayside Landing in 2002 and was used as an electronic field trip for students all over Virginia.
An informational kiosk is located at Bayside with findings from the USGS investigation and research.