Emerald Coast

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. Another unofficial term is the "Redneck Riviera," which also is sometimes considered to stretch to Gulf Shores, Alabama.

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...
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