Adjust font size: Walk along our 24 miles of gleaming, powder-soft beaches and you’ll quickly forget the cares of your everyday world. Our soft, white sand is sculpted from Appalachian quartz so pure that walking through our Gulf water is like having an aquarium at your feet.

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No Littering, Vehicles, Glass, Fires, or Animals ON THE BEACH.

Delight your senses in our spectacular beaches (voted “safest in the country” and among the top ten in the country) and the expansive waters of Choctawahatchee Bay. Discover miles and miles of pure playground for shell seeking, sun bronzing, sand castle building, soul searching, and surrendering to sun-drenched solitude.

Four renovated beachfront parks – Beasley Park, James Lee Park, Marler Memorial Park and Wayside Park – and six beach mini-parks featuring ADA accessibility, showers and bathrooms are here for all to enjoy. Okaloosa County values and protects its coastal dunes. Erosion is a serious problem along the 30 miles of coastal areas in the county. The dunes are fragile, easily damaged and require special safeguards to ensure their continued protection of inland areas. Coastal dunes range from seemingly insignificant sand hills to formations more than 50 feet high. Unvegetated dunes are vulnerable to destruction by the same forces that form them – waves and wind. These dunes are built by sand that blows into vegetated areas on the beach. They act as dikes against flooding and as reservoirs of sand to replenish the beach. During storms and hurricanes, dune sand washes into the sea and reduces the energy of storm waves.

The dune restoration project at Beasley Park began in 1991 as an Outdoor Classroom Demonstration project between the Yellow River Soil & Water Conservation District, the NRCS Plant Materials Center, the Three River Resources Conservation, Tourist Development Council and Okaloosa County.

Essential to the project’s success are the hundreds of volunteers who have planted and helped maintain dune vegetation at Beasley Park. What works at Beasley Park has served as a model to conserve, protect and restore dune areas in Okaloosa, Walton, Santa Rosa, and Escambia counties. An educational display at the park helps visitors to identify the plants used in restoration and shows how Beasley Park looked before and after Hurricane Opal.

With more than 60 percent of our lovely beaches protected by law, you can be assured that when you return it will still be the same – natural and undeveloped forever.

Excessive foot or vehicle traffic and construction activities can destroy the natural vegetation that hold a dune in place. Beach accessways/walkways can prevent the concentrated foot traffic that will destroy dune vegetation. Most access structures are made of wood and act as a bridge around or over the dune. Help us with keep our beaches beautiful. Please utilize these convenient structures for your pleasure and the preservation of our dune system.

Sea turtles come ashore to nest on the gulf beaches of Okaloosa County usually between April and November. Due to human exploitation and habitat destruction, sea turtles are threatened with extinction. The female turtle usually comes shore at night to lay her eggs in the sand. She will lay about 100 eggs in a process that takes from 2 to 3 hours to complete. You can help protect these remarkable animals. Avoid disturbing a turtle that is crawling to or from the water. Avoid crowding around a nesting turtle and do not shine lights in her eyes or take flash pictures.

All sea turtles are protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act and State Law. It is illegal to kill or harm sea turtles. It is also illegal to disturb the nest of a sea turtle. Heavy fines and possible imprisonment may result

This system is in place for your safety. Please observe and obey the Flag System and your local Lifeguard. Absence of the flag does not constitute safe swimming conditions!



Rip currents can be unpredictable, dangerous and deadly, Please use good judgment and obey the lifeguards and flag warning system while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico.

For additional beach safety tips and information please visit www.destinbeachsafety.com.