The Emerald Coast is an area in the US state of Florida on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico which stretches about 100 miles through four counties, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, and Bay, from Gulf Breeze on the east side of Pensacola Bay to Panama City on the east side of the St. Andrews Bay, although some South Alabama communities use it as well.
It had previously been dubbed the "Playground Area of the Gulfcoast" from the 1940s through the 1980s, as witnessed by the name of the Fort Walton, Florida, later Fort Walton Beach, Florida (from 1953) newspaper, the Playground News, later the Playground Daily News, now the Northwest Florida Daily News. According to the Daily News, the term was coined in 1983 by a junior high school student, Andrew Dier, who won $50 in the contest for a new area slogan. [1] Another unofficial term is the "Redneck Riviera," which also is sometimes considered to stretch to Gulf Shores, Alabama.[2]
Popular vacation destinations include Pensacola Beach, Gulf Breeze, Navarre Beach, Fort Walton Beach, Niceville, WaterColor, Panama City Beach, Destin, and Seaside, a planned community whose iconic pastel-paint and tin-roof construction was made famous in the Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show, filmed in the area from 1996-1997. Other communities on the Emerald Coast include Perdido Key, Navarre, Sandestin, Mexico Beach, Grayton Beach, Inlet Beach, Santa Rosa Beach, and Seagrove. Approximately 80% of the Emerald Coast's 4.5 million yearly visitors go to Destin, FL.
The area is known as a family drive destination, although in the past decade, its popularity has expanded greatly, leading to new construction booms and seemingly overnight changes. [3] Many development communities similar to Seaside have sprung up in Walton County and the west end of Panama City Beach, raising property values.
Deep-sea fishing is a huge draw for the area, with Destin holding the nickname "World's Luckiest Fishing Village" [4] (and several saltwater world records) and Panama City Beach hosting the annual high-dollar Bay Point Billfish Invitational. The area has many seafood restaurants as well.
This roughly 100-mile stretch is home to several military bases, with installations including Naval Air Station Pensacola (home of the Navy's Blue Angels demonstration team and the initial training site for all naval aviators), Hurlburt Field, Eglin Air Force Base (one of the largest military bases in America), Tyndall Air Force Base (home to the Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter jets), Coastal Systems Station-Naval Surface Warfare Center (home to the Navy Experimental Diving Unit and Naval Diving & Salvage Training Center), and Corry Station Naval Technical Training Center.
In addition to military and related civilian contractors, which are a major presence, tourism, fishing and hospitality industries are also major employers in the area.
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In addition to The Truman Show mentioned above, filming of scenes for Jaws 2 took place in the region. Interiors for the youth's pinball hang-out were filmed in Fort Walton Beach at the now-razed original location of Hog's Breath Saloon on Okaloosa Island, and Bruce the Shark's control sled was placed on the bottom of the Gulf off Navarre.
The 1972 eco-horror film Frogs was filmed in Walton County, Florida, in and around the Wesley House, an old southern mansion located in Eden Gardens State Park in the town of Point Washington, situated on Tucker Bayou off Choctawhatchee Bay.
The military presence in the region has led to many film appearances, the earliest being the practice takeoff runs by Doolittle Raiders for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, shot an auxiliary field at Eglin Field in 1944.
Redneck Riviera is also the title of a song by Tom T. Hall about this region (from his 1996 album Songs from Sopchoppy). Lyrics include:
A level in the Dreamcast game Sonic Adventure is named Emerald Coast.