WATER & COAST
Ponte Vedra Beach
St. Johns County · Atlantic Coast
An affluent unincorporated beach community at the north end of St. Johns County, home to TPC Sawgrass and the headquarters of the PGA Tour.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The place began as a mining camp. Minerals were found here in 1914 and a settlement called Mineral City grew around the work, with the Buckman and Pritchard Mining Company taking titanium, zircon and rutile out of the sand until National Lead Company bought the operation in 1921 and stopped the digging. In 1929 Colonel Joseph C. Stehlin and his wife went looking for a better name for a resort development and found Pontevedra on an old Spanish map, a Galician town named for a Roman bridge. In June 1942 the German submarine U-584 put four saboteurs ashore here as part of Operation Pastorius; all four were caught and executed. The Sawgrass Stadium Course has hosted the Players Championship every year since 1982, and the PGA Tour keeps its headquarters here. The community covers about 33.8 square miles roughly 18 miles southeast of Jacksonville, with a population near 29,500 and beaches that stay quieter than those further south
Not identified in this guide as an officially clothing-optional beach. This is a visit category, not a safety rating—check surf, lifeguards, water quality and posted rules.
BEACH CONDITIONS
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