Boardwalk

A typical nature boardwalk, carrying walkers over wetlands on the Milford Track, New Zealand.

A boardwalk (board walk, boarded path, promenade) is a walkway built with wood boards for tourists in areas where some natural feature like a beach or river would prevent easy movement on foot from one place of interest to another, where the proximity of a pier makes necessary a passage dedicated to civilian traffic, or where people wish to enjoy a park, a bog, a wetland, or some other fragile ecosystem needing protection from them, or enjoy a waterfall, a series of caves, a cliff side, or other such perilous ecosystems from whose dangers they need protection.

Boardwalks along intertidal zones are known as foreshoreways in Australia. A boardwalk along a river is often known as a riverwalk and a boardwalk along an oceanfront is often known as an oceanway. Aside from their obvious pedestrian usage, boardwalks have been used to create commercial districts and enable commerce along waterfronts where conventional streets would have been more expensive because of a beach or other waterfront feature. Although boardwalks can be found around the world, they are especially common along the East Coast of the United States.

In the United States

The boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland, a wooden pathway adjacent to the beach that is lined with businesses, typical of boardwalks along the East Coast of the United States.

Many boardwalks in the United States have become so successful as commercial districts and tourist attractions that the simple wooden pathways have been replaced by esplanades made of concrete, brick or other construction, sometimes with a wooden facade on the surface and sometimes not. One of the earliest such boardwalks was designed in New Jersey and opened June 26, 1870, in Atlantic City.^[1]

Gallery

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  A wooden boardwalk allows passage through a lake, such as this one in National Park Plitvice Lakes, Croatia.
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  This boardwalk allows people to cross Horicon Marsh.
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  Boardwalk to the Lambi Beach on the Greek island of Kos
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  Boardwalks help walkers navigate difficult terrain as at Pyhä-Luosto National Park in Lapland, Finland.
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  A boardwalk enables those on foot to cross a bog in Estonia.
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  Boardwalk at Ocmulgee National Monument

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Boardwalks.

Look up boardwalk in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.