The town that holds all this came together piece by piece. A resort “Grand Opening” in 1936 put the beach on the map; over the next decades a string of separate beach communities — Long Beach, Edgewater, Gulf Beach and more — grew along the shore, incorporated in 1953, and finally merged into a single City of Panama City Beach in 1970. Before the resorts there were fishing hamlets, turpentine camps, and, during World War II, a shipyard and a gunnery range on St. Andrews Bay.
Our Panama City Beach logo carries the Florida alligator over “Florida Territory · Est. 1845,” the year Florida became a state — the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Florida town. Printed in clean retro black-and-white that reads like an old crate label, the alligator stands for Florida as a whole; what makes this one Panama City Beach is everything behind it — the neon Miracle Strip and the Starliner’s wooden hills, Goofy Golf’s concrete dinosaurs, and the quartz-white sand and emerald water of the World’s Most Beautiful Beaches.
Why People Visit Panama City Beach
Panama City Beach rewards visitors who want bright white sand, warm emerald water, and an unpretentious good time, with a thread of retro neon still running through it. Add the piers, Shell Island, and the year-round Gulf sun, and the World’s Most Beautiful Beaches make their own case.
