The northern part of the beach is private, administered by the Town of Hull, and does not allow visitors to park except as guests of residents.

The beach is a habitat for federally protected species, including the piping plover, least tern, and occasionally harbor seals.

[8][9] Others include U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, former mayor of Boston John F. Fitzgerald, Irish-American poet John Boyle O'Reilly, who had a house on the peninsula, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who spent time at Nantasket in July 1841, reflecting on "the beauty of the good" and "the book of flesh and blood".

[10][11][12] The peninsula was forested until at least 1624, when the first European settlers are known to have begun agriculture on what was then a tidal island, with a land bridge connecting what is today Nantasket Beach to the mainland.

[13] Plymouth colonists kept a structure in the area to serve as storehouse for trading with the Massachusett tribe, implying that Indigenous people used the site routinely.