Stuart
Start with Stuart to understand the established center, nearby services and everyday rhythm within Martin County.
Complete Florida county guide
Martin
County
Known for waterways, boating, smaller-scale coastal communities and Stuart’s active downtown, with convenient reach into northern Palm Beach County.
Sunrise FloridaAtlantic Coast
REGIONAtlantic Coast
COMMUNITIES TO START WITHStuart · Jensen Beach · Palm City · Hobe Sound
LIFESTYLE SIGNALSBoating · Small-city life · Beaches
Start with daily life
What Martin County feels like before you choose a neighborhood.
Known for waterways, boating, smaller-scale coastal communities and Stuart’s active downtown, with convenient reach into northern Palm Beach County.
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
- 162,176Census estimate
- At the last full count
- 158,4312020 Census
- Median age
- 53.3
- Aged 65 and over
- 32.2%
- Under 18
- 16.1%
- Median household income
- $82,943
- Median home value
- $432,200what owners estimate
- Homeownership
- 79.6%
- People per household
- 2.33
- Average commute
- 28.4 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
BoatingSmall-city lifeBeaches
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.
Jensen Beach
Use Jensen Beach to compare housing patterns, main-road access and the shopping or medical stops used during a normal week.
Palm City
Walk or drive through Palm City at different times of day to judge traffic, neighborhood character and access to outdoor space.
Hobe Sound
Compare Hobe Sound with the county’s other major places for commute direction, home choices and the pace you want in Martin County.
Hospitals in Martin 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.
Stuart
Cleveland Clinic Martin North Hospital
239 licensed beds
The state's record ↗StuartCleveland Clinic Martin South Hospital
54 licensed beds
The state's record ↗The state licenses two more hospitals in Martin 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
12 places that reveal the county.
Use enduring natural, historic and cultural places to understand the area beyond a real-estate showing.
Jonathan Dickinson State Park
It is named for a Quaker merchant whose ship went down on this coast in 1696, leaving him, his family and the others to walk north to St. Augustine. In 1942 the Army built Camp Murphy on this ground, a secret radar training school with more than a thousand buildings and over six thousand men in it; the school closed in November 1944 and the land became a state park in 1950.
House of Refuge Museum
The Treasury Department put up ten houses of refuge along the Atlantic coast of Florida for the United States Life-Saving Service, spaced out so that a sailor cast ashore on an empty beach might reach shelter and food on foot. This is the only one of the ten still standing.
Blowing Rocks Preserve
The rock is Anastasia limestone, and the sea has worn holes and channels through it. When a heavy swell runs, the waves force water up through those holes and it goes off like a geyser, plumes reaching as high as fifty feet.
Elliott Museum
Harmon Elliott founded the original museum in 1961 as a tribute to his father Sterling Elliott, an inventor whose patents ran from a quadricycle to the addressing machine. That first building was pulled down in 2011, too small and structurally past saving, and this one replaced it.
Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center
The centerpiece is the Gamefish Lagoon, a large saltwater enclosure holding native Florida species including sharks and the game fish the Treasure Coast is known for, with staff feeding them on a published schedule so visitors can see them working rather than drifting. A stingray touch exhibit lets children handle the animals under supervision, and there are resident sea turtles and a run of saltwater aquariums.
Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge
The Indian River Lagoon divides it. On the ocean side, seven hundred and thirty-five acres of Jupiter Island beach make some of the most productive sea turtle nesting ground in the country, used by loggerhead, leatherback, green and Kemp's ridley turtles.
Halpatiokee Regional Park
Drivers on Interstate 95 see the ballfields and assume that is all there is. Behind them the ground runs down to the South Fork of the St. Lucie River through pine and oak. The mountain bike trail covers seven and a half miles in twelve separate segments of differing difficulty, and riders should carry a map because several junctions are unmarked; helmets are required.
Stuart Heritage Museum
George W. Parks built it and ran a grocery on the ground floor while living upstairs, which was the usual arrangement for a merchant in a river town of that period. From 1913 it was the Stuart Mercantile Company.
Children's Museum of the Treasure Coast
Everything here is meant to be touched, climbed on or taken apart, and the exhibits are built around Florida rather than being generic: the things children handle are drawn from the coast, the lagoon and the working life of this part of the state. The museum runs educational programs and outreach into local schools, summer camps, birthday parties and seasonal events including a trick or treat stroll in the fall.
Bathtub Reef Beach
Sabellariid worms cement grains of sand together to make their tubes, and enough of them working together over enough time have built a reef running parallel to the shore a short way out. More than five hundred marine species live in and around it, sea turtles among them.
Sailfish Splash Waterpark
The lazy river runs a thousand feet. A four-story slide tower and a separate speed slide of two hundred and fifty-three feet take the older children, and a zero-entry splash playground of seven thousand three hundred and twenty-six square feet handles the younger ones, with jets, sprays and a three hundred gallon bucket that tips over the whole area at intervals.
The Lyric Theatre
John Sherwood and Mark Casto designed it in concrete, mixing Beaux Arts with Mission and Spanish Revival, and it opened with nine hundred seats for silent pictures and live shows. Sound equipment went in during the early 1930s.
Beaches in Martin County
Every beach, one clear card.
9BEACH 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.
Jensen Sea Turtle Beach
Martin County, Florida
The county's own name for it is Jensen Sea Turtle Beach; locals call it Jensen Beach. A wide sandy Atlantic beach on Hutchinson Island at 4191 NE Ocean Boulevard, and a full park rather than a strip of sand: several picnic pavilions, volleyball courts, restrooms and showers, and the Sand Dune Cafe open seven days a week. One of the four beaches Martin County guards, with towers from 10 a.m., the north one until 4:45 and the south until 4:30, and a beach wheelchair on hand.
Stuart Beach
Martin County, Florida
On NE Ocean Boulevard, straight across from the Elliott Museum and the Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center. Covered picnic areas, beach volleyball courts, basketball courts, showers, restrooms and the Seaside Cafe. One of the four beaches Martin County guards, with towers from 10 a.m., the north one until 4:30 and the south until 4:50, and a beach wheelchair on hand.
Virginia Forrest Beach
Martin County, Florida
A public beach access on Hutchinson Island at 1981 NE Ocean Boulevard in Stuart. It is not one of the four beaches the county guards, so there are no lifeguards here.
Bathtub Reef Beach
Martin County, Florida
1585 SE MacArthur Boulevard in Stuart. The reef offshore was built by tiny tube-building Sabellariid sea worms that cement sand grains together into a vast network of tube dwellings, and more than 500 marine creatures live in it, endangered sea turtles among them. In calm seasons the reef holds the water back and gives the beach its bathtub effect; spring and summer are the calm ones, with sandbars forming. In fall and winter, or in a nor'easter, a tropical storm or a hurricane, the currents run strong, the waves get big and the sand erodes. Scuba diving is possible offshore in the shallow water. Lifeguards are on duty daily from 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. The county keeps a webcam on it.
Ross Witham Beach
Martin County, Florida
704 SE MacArthur Boulevard on Hutchinson Island. The Georges Valentine Underwater Archaeological Preserve lies about 100 yards off this shore, which makes it a shipwreck dive site as much as a beach. It is not one of the four beaches the county guards.
Santa Lucea Beach
Martin County, Florida
55 NE MacArthur Boulevard, at the southern end of Hutchinson Island, an unguarded beach with a five-acre natural area behind it and ample parking. The way down to the sand runs over a wooden boardwalk and is accessible.
House of Refuge Beach
Martin County, Florida
301 SE MacArthur Boulevard in Stuart, in front of the Gilbert's Bar House of Refuge, which is the oldest building in Martin County and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974. Ten houses of refuge were built along Florida's east coast as havens for shipwrecked sailors and travelers, and this is the only one still standing. The shoreline here is rocky. The Italian brigantine Georges Valentine went down off it, and the wreck still lies about 100 yards out and is dived. The house is run as a museum by the Historical Society of Martin County, so check its hours before you plan a visit around it.
Hobe Sound Beach
Martin County, Florida
1 SE Beach Road, reached by driving east on SE Bridge Road through the tree canopy. One of the four beaches Martin County guards, with lifeguards from 10 a.m. to 4:50 p.m. and a beach wheelchair on hand. Sea turtles nest along this shore.
Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge Beach
Martin County, Florida
The refuge beach is reached from the Refuge Beach parking lot on North Beach Road, at the north end of Jupiter Island. Beaches and trails are open sunrise to sunset. This is a federal fee area: $5 for the day or $25 for the year, paid at the fee booth, a self-pay station, the Hobe Sound Nature Center or on Recreation.gov, and a Federal Duck Stamp or an interagency pass covers it. Hiking, wildlife watching and photography are allowed in the open areas and on marked trails, boating and paddling in the coastal waters, and fishing with a rod and reel or a pole and line. No dogs on the Atlantic beach; leashed dogs are allowed only on the trails around the visitor center. No metal detectors, no motor vehicles, no camping, no fires and no drones.
Official planning desk
Check current public information before making the move.
Florida disaster preparedness mapsOfficial evacuation-zone, route and storm-surge planning maps.
Open official source ↗
Florida school accountability reportsCurrent state school and district accountability information.
Open official source ↗
Florida community health dataCounty-level public health indicators and community reports.
Open official source ↗
Florida housing resourcesState resources for homebuyers, renters and local assistance programs.
Open official source ↗QUESTIONS THAT NAME THIS COUNTY
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