Panama City
Start with Panama City to understand the established center, nearby services and everyday rhythm within Bay County.
Complete Florida county guide
Bay
County
A major regional center where tourism, military activity, ports, healthcare and expanding residential communities meet the Gulf.
Northwest FloridaPanhandle & Emerald Coast
REGIONPanhandle & Emerald Coast
COMMUNITIES TO START WITHPanama City · Panama City Beach · Lynn Haven
LIFESTYLE SIGNALSRegional hub · Military · Beaches
Start with daily life
What Bay County feels like before you choose a neighborhood.
A major regional center where tourism, military activity, ports, healthcare and expanding residential communities meet the Gulf.
Use this guide as a first-pass planning tool. On a scouting trip, compare actual commute routes, insurance requirements, medical access, school or training options and the places you would use in an ordinary week—not only the best-known attraction.
The numbers that matter if you are moving
- Population
- 186,393Census estimate
- At the last full count
- 175,2162020 Census
- Median age
- 41.0
- Aged 65 and over
- 18.3%
- Under 18
- 21.1%
- Median household income
- $73,533
- Median home value
- $310,500what owners estimate
- Homeownership
- 66.8%
- People per household
- 2.33
- Average commute
- 23.9 minutes
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, published January 2026, read September 19, 2026. Survey figures are estimates; median home value is what owners estimate their home is worth, not a sale price.
COUNTY LIFESTYLE THEMES
Regional hubMilitaryBeaches
Relocation decision desk
Six checks before you choose a county.
Property cost, flood and wind, schools, healthcare, daily travel and storm readiness.
How to research a Florida county →Communities to compare
Begin with the county’s major places.
These are starting points, not a ranking. Add nearby towns and neighborhoods as you learn your daily route and housing priorities.
Panama City Beach
Use Panama City Beach to compare housing patterns, main-road access and the shopping or medical stops used during a normal week.
Lynn Haven
Walk or drive through Lynn Haven at different times of day to judge traffic, neighborhood character and access to outdoor space.
Hospitals in Bay County
Two hospitals with an emergency room.
From the state's own hospital list. Each card opens the state's record for that hospital: its address, phone, services and inspection reports.
Panama City
Ascension Sacred Heart Bay
323 licensed beds
The state's record ↗Panama CityHCA Florida Gulf Coast Hospital
282 licensed beds
The state's record ↗The state licenses three more hospitals in Bay County with no emergency room; its list names them.
How do I compare hospitals in Florida? →How do I find a doctor who takes Medicare? →Search the state's hospital list ↗
Source: Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, FloridaHealthFinder, Locate a Facility (hospitals), read September 25, 2026.
Evergreen county experiences
18 places that reveal the county.
Use enduring natural, historic and cultural places to understand the area beyond a real-estate showing.
St. Andrews State Park
The state bought the first 302 acres from the federal government in 1947 at two dollars and fifty cents an acre, and opened the park to the public in 1951 once the bridges made it reachable. It has grown past 1,200 acres since.
Camp Helen State Park
The park sits at the western end of Bay County at 23937 Panama City Beach Parkway, with water on three sides and Gulf beachfront at the front of it. Lake Powell is one of the largest coastal dune lakes in Florida, a formation that occurs in only a handful of places worldwide, where a freshwater lake sits behind the dune line and breaks through to the Gulf now and then.
Panama City Beach
The Hathaway Bridge opened in 1929 and put the sand within reach of Panama City, and Gideon Thomas founded the first resort area on the strength of it. Others followed, and for forty years the coast here was a string of small separate places with names like Edgewater Gulf Beach, Laguna Beach, West Panama City Beach, Dutchville, Playville and Julia.
Shell Island
Shell Island belongs to St. Andrews State Park, which covers 1,200 acres of undisturbed forest and sand dune on the Panama City Beach side. The park's own description calls the island deserted, and you reach it by ferryboat rather than by road or bridge.
Conservation Park
Panama City Beach Conservation Park runs to 2,900 acres and carries more than 24 miles of trail, which is a lot of walking for a park a city owns and runs itself. There are five color-coded loops, from 1.8 miles up to 11, and a further 0.6-mile loop along Walt Oberst Way.
ZooWorld Zoological Park
ZooWorld holds more than 200 animals, and that count does not include its 85 alligators. Among them are sloths, kangaroos, hyenas, lions, parakeets and giraffes. Two areas are named on its listing: the Allapattah Swamp Experience, recently rebuilt, and the Wanyama Pori Africa exhibit.
Pier Park
Pier Park opened on February 14, 2008, and covers 895,974 square feet on a single level. It holds 141 stores, with Dillard's, JC Penney and Target as the anchors, and it is laid out as an outdoor complex rather than an enclosed mall: shops, restaurants and a movie theater arranged along streets you walk between.
Man in the Sea Museum
The Man in the Sea Museum has been keeping the history of diving and underwater exploration since 1982. The object most people come for is SEALAB I, the United States Navy habitat, which sits on the site.
Science and Discovery Center of Northwest Florida
The idea for this place came from local civic organizations in 1967 and the first exhibit opened in 1969. The building it uses now went up in 1981, and it took its present name, the Science and Discovery Center of Northwest Florida, in April 2011.
Panama City Center for the Arts
The building at 19 East 4th Street was the city's original city hall, and it was converted into an arts center as part of the effort to bring downtown Panama City back. The City of Panama City owns it and the Bay Arts Alliance, a local nonprofit, runs it with some city support.
Crooked Island Beach
Crooked Island Beach is on Tyndall Air Force Base land and you cannot simply turn up. A recreational passport is required, and anyone holding an active military identification card is exempt from that. It sits about an hour from the middle of Panama City Beach and is rarely crowded even at the height of the season.
Historic St. Andrews
People have lived on this ground for at least 13,000 years. The Spanish reached it around 1500, and European settlement began in 1827 when John Clark, a retired governor of Georgia, built a house here.
Shipwreck Island Waterpark
Shipwreck Island covers 15 acres and holds three million gallons of water across more than twenty attractions. The ones named on its own site are the Zoom Flume, the White Knuckle River and the Pirate's Race, with the Tadpole Hole set aside for small children.
WonderWorks Panama City Beach
The conceit is that this is Professor Wonder's laboratory, carried hundreds of miles by a tornado and dropped upside down, and the building is put up to look exactly that way from the road. Visitors go in through an inversion tunnel and are turned the right way up.
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Panama City Beach
Ripley's Believe It or Not! runs an Odditorium on Front Beach Road in Panama City Beach. Its own page describes it as an attraction of hundreds of unbelievable but true artifacts, together with interactive games and the stories behind the objects.
Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show
Pirates Voyage is a dinner show built around an indoor lagoon with full-sized pirate ships in it. Two crews, the Crimson and the Sapphire, fight across the set on land, on deck, in the water and on the rigging above the ships, with high-flying acrobatics through the action and live animals worked into the performance.
Russell-Fields City Pier
The Russell-Fields City Pier runs more than 1,500 feet into the Gulf, which the city calls one of the longest piers on that coast, and it is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Anglers take cobia, king mackerel, Spanish mackerel and redfish among others as the seasons turn.
Coconut Creek Family Fun Park
Coconut Creek is built around two things. The Gran Maze is the larger, a walk-through puzzle with an observation deck above it and a Maze Runner game played inside. The other is mini golf on tropically themed courses, one of which is called Washed Ashore.
Beaches in Bay County
Every beach, one clear card.
10BEACH DESTINATIONS
Each card gives the beach, its visit category and its next steps: the practical visit guide, the official site where the beach has one, and directions. Always verify current parking, fees, water quality, lifeguard coverage and posted rules before leaving.
STANDARD PUBLIC BEACH
Not identified here as clothing-optional. This category does not guarantee child safety, calm water or lifeguard coverage.
CLOTHING-OPTIONAL
Nudity is officially permitted in all or part of the destination. Read the current notice before taking children.
NUDITY ADVISORY
Nudity may be encountered in a remote area even without an official clothing-optional designation.
Camp Helen State Park Beach
Bay County, Florida
A 180-acre day-use park with the Gulf on one side and Lake Powell on the other, the largest coastal dune lake in Florida. Fishing in both the fresh water and the salt. From 1945 to 1987 this was a resort for Avondale Mills employees, and the restored lodge and the rainbow cottages from the 1930s are still standing; the park is on the National Register of Historic Places. Nature trails run through several different plant communities. Restrooms, showers, parking, picnic pavilions, a visitor center and a mobility mat down to the sand. Open 8 a.m. to sunset, $4 a vehicle or $2 on foot or by bicycle, into an honor box.
Laguna Beach
Bay County, Florida
Nine county beach accesses in a row along Front Beach Road, numbered 77 through 85, running from opposite 12th Street to just west of Twin Lakes Drive. They are between 10 and 50 feet wide and most of them carry a boardwalk with rails and steps down to the sand. These are walk-on accesses rather than parks.
Panama City Beach
Bay County, Florida
Bay County's main shore, and the rules here are worth knowing before you arrive. A red flag means rip currents are strong enough to be dangerous; double red means the Gulf is closed to swimming altogether, and that one is enforced. Anyone 21 or over may drink on the sand eleven months of the year, but not during March, and glass is banned all year. Dogs are not allowed on Bay County beaches with one exception, the west side of the Russell-Fields City Pier at Pier Park. Tents and anything else left unattended between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. can be removed, and camping overnight is not allowed.
Russell-Fields Pier Beach
Bay County, Florida
The city pier at Pier Park, and the one place on the whole of Bay County's shore where dogs are allowed on the sand: the designated area is on the west side of it. Everything else that applies to Panama City Beach applies here, including the red and double red flag rules and the ban on glass.
M. B. Miller County Pier Beach
Bay County, Florida
12213 Front Beach Road: a 1,500-foot fishing pier with six beach accesses spread along 1,700 feet of beachfront behind it, and part of that beach is guarded. Fishing from the pier is $6 a day for anyone over six, and $3 for children, people 65 and over, active military and disabled visitors; watching without a rod is $3. A bait and tackle shop and a seasonal drink stand. Restrooms, and mobility mats down to the sand. The pier is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Parking is $2 an hour or $12 for the day, cashless, card only, with kiosks that turn cash into a prepaid card. Bay County residents can apply for a free annual permit.
Rick Seltzer Park Beach
Bay County, Florida
7419 Thomas Drive, a small county park with a guarded beach, which is not something every access on this coast has. A boardwalk down to the sand with mobility mats, a gazebo, restrooms and parking.
St. Andrews State Park Beach
Bay County, Florida
More than a mile and a half of white sand in several separate swimming areas, with rock jetties that draw divers and snorkelers and hold gun mounts left from the Second World War. Two fishing piers on Grand Lagoon. The campground takes everything from tents to 50-foot RVs with water, power and sewer, and there are furnished tents with a water view and electricity, plus a group camp for eight to thirty people. Restrooms, outdoor showers, laundry, picnic pavilions, a playground, accessible boardwalks and beach wheelchairs. Three concession stores rent bicycles, kayaks and pontoon boats. Launching a boat is $12 for one person or $16 for two to eight. Dogs stay on a six-foot leash and off the beach, the boardwalks and the buildings.
Shell Island Beach
Bay County, Florida
An undeveloped barrier island reached only by boat. The official Shell Island Ferry runs from St. Andrews State Park between March and Labor Day; you board at the Pier Store and a tram carries you to the marina. Sailings are 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. from March through September and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. from October through February, weather permitting.
Mexico Beach
Bay County, Florida
3.1 miles of white sand in Bay County, and the city calls its beaches uncrowded. South 37th Street is a way onto the sand, with public parking there and in several areas on the beach side of U.S. 98. Sunset Park, 1813 Highway 98, sits on the beach with picnic areas, parking and restrooms, and Canal Park at the Gulf end of Canal Parkway has a picnic pavilion and restrooms. The city pier was destroyed by Hurricane Michael in 2018, and in September 2026 FEMA promised the money to rebuild it; the work is expected to take about a year once it starts. Sea turtles nest from May through October: stay 30 feet from a nesting turtle and keep lights off the beach at night.
Crooked Island Beach
Bay County, Florida
Crooked Island sits on Tyndall Air Force Base land, so the base decides who goes on it, not the county. Anyone who is not Department of Defense personnel and is 16 or older needs a recreational permit, bought online through the base iSportsman system, and all sales are final with no refunds. Since July 11, 2024, recreation inside the guarded perimeter has been limited to Department of Defense personnel, which leaves a civilian permit covering only the areas outside that gate. Dogs and bicycles are not allowed on any Tyndall beach.
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