Forgotten Coast 5
Oyster towns and barrier islands on the quiet bend of the Gulf.
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Apalachicola
Ice & Tide
A doctor here built a machine to make ice, because his patients were dying of fever.
75 guides · 455 places
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Perry
Tree Capital
A working forest town that kept its festival for seventy years.
74 guides · 950 places
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Port St. Joe
St. Joseph, 1838
Florida's first constitution was written in a town that was gone within six years.
77 guides · 977 places
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St. George Island
The Light That Kept Moving
Built in 1833, rebuilt twice, decommissioned, collapsed, and rebuilt again.
73 guides · 246 places
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Steinhatchee
River of Man
The season opens in June and the whole town goes wading.
71 guides · 210 places
Nature Coast 7
Spring-fed rivers, scallop flats and working waterfronts north of Tampa.
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Cedar Key
The Wood the World Wrote With
Seventeen sawmills, half a million board feet a week, and then one storm.
69 guides · 237 places
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Dade City
Kumquat Country
A whole town festival for a citrus fruit most of the country has never eaten.
74 guides · 974 places
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Hudson
Gopher Racing Capital
It called itself the gopher racing capital of the world, and nobody disputed it.
75 guides · 927 places
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New Port Richey
The Hollywood That Wasn't
A silent-film star built a house on the river and a theatre took his name. Then the boom ended.
70 guides · 924 places
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Port Richey
The Cotee
Everyone shortens the Pithlachascotee. Johnny Cash lived on it for twenty-three years.
74 guides · 969 places
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Spring Hill
Roadside Florida
Mermaids, a dinosaur filling station, and a town that wanted to be called something else.
74 guides · 892 places
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Wesley Chapel
Boomtown
5,691 people in 2000. 64,866 in 2020. The fastest thing in Florida.
71 guides · 949 places
Panhandle 1
Sugar-sand beaches on the far northwest shore.
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Navarre Beach
The Quiet Stretch
National seashore on one side, Pensacola Beach on the other, and almost nothing in between.
77 guides · 1,000 places
Central Highlands 6
Citrus hills, lake chains and the highest ground in peninsular Florida.
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Altamonte Springs
The Winter Colony
Massachusetts money built a resort here in 1882, and the chapel it left behind has moved twice.
73 guides · 949 places
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Clermont
Hills & Groves
The steepest ground in peninsular Florida, planted with citrus until the freezes took it.
75 guides · 914 places
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Lady Lake
Depot & Grove
A railroad stop from 1883, and the citrus town that grew around the tracks.
72 guides · 960 places
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Mount Dora
184 Feet
The only inland freshwater lighthouse in Florida, on a plateau the state is not supposed to have.
75 guides · 968 places
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Oviedo
The Chickens of Oviedo
Celery money built the downtown. The chickens took it over.
71 guides · 956 places
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Sanford
Celery City
One winter killed the citrus. What grew back named the city.
74 guides · 929 places
Atlantic Coast 3
Planned cities and surf towns on the east shore.
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Flagler Beach
Orange Sand
Six miles of coquina-orange beach, interrupted once, by a pier.
77 guides · 670 places
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Fleming Island
Hibernia
An Irish soldier's Spanish land grant, a naval airfield, and the streets built over its runways.
71 guides · 976 places
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Palm Coast
Drawn in 1969
Sixty-nine miles of canal were dug before anybody lived here.
75 guides · 937 places
Treasure Coast 4
Shipwreck coast — inlets, rivers and the 1715 fleet.
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Jensen Beach
Pineapple Capital
A million boxes a year in 1895. Nothing at all by 1920.
76 guides · 974 places
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Sebastian
The 1715 Fleet
A hurricane sank a treasure fleet off this beach and the coast has been named for it ever since.
76 guides · 969 places
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Stuart
Where the Rivers Meet
The St. Lucie, the Indian River Lagoon and the Atlantic, inside one town's limits.
76 guides · 957 places
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Vero Beach
Where Spring Started
Sixty seasons of spring training, and a complex that now carries Jackie Robinson's name.
75 guides · 930 places
Southwest & Everglades 2
Where the road ends and the Ten Thousand Islands begin.
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Everglades City
End of the Road
A county seat that lost its county, down to three hundred and fifty-two people.
60 guides · 108 places
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Marco Island
Calusa & Concrete
Fifteen hundred years of Calusa island, then one decade of dredge and fill.
76 guides · 974 places
Heartland 2
Cattle country, big water and the Florida almost nobody drives to.
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Arcadia
The Granddaddy
Florida's oldest rodeo, and a downtown rebuilt in brick because the last one burned.
76 guides · 970 places
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Okeechobee
Big Water
Oki chubi. Seven hundred and thirty square miles, nine feet deep, walled in concrete.
66 guides · 958 places