Complete Florida county guide
Amelia Island’s coast, fast-growing Yulee and inland rural communities make Nassau a varied gateway at Florida’s northeast corner.
Start with daily life
At the 2020 Census, Nassau County held 90,352 people. The Census Bureau's estimate for July 2025 is 106,879.
That is 16,527 more people in five years and three months. Around nine a day, every day, without a pause.
Eighteen point three percent growth. Duval County next door — the whole of Jacksonville — grew 6.8 percent over the same period. Nassau grew almost three times as fast as the city it borders.
So read everything below knowing that the county described in it is already behind. The published density is 139.3 people per square mile, measured in 2020. Run the 2025 estimate over the same 648.68 square miles and it is about 165. That is arithmetic on two published figures, not a forecast, and it is the single most useful thing to understand before you look at a house here.
Set against Jacksonville
| Nassau | Duval | |
|---|---|---|
| Population | 106,879 | 1,062,963 |
| Growth since 2020 | 18.3% | 6.8% |
| Median home value | $382,800 | $303,500 |
| Median gross rent | $1,526 | $1,475 |
| Homeownership | 82.7% | 58.2% |
| Median income | $89,804 | $71,277 |
| Aged 65 and over | 26.7% | 17.3% |
| Under 18 | 18.8% | 21.2% |
| Average commute | 30.1 min | 24.1 min |
| In poverty | 8.7% | 12.2% |
Nassau is richer, older, more expensive, more owned and further from work than the county next door. None of that is surprising for a suburban county.
One line in that table is surprising, and most people never notice it.
Relocation decision desk
Property cost, flood and wind, schools, healthcare, daily travel and storm readiness.
How to research a Florida county →Communities to compare
These are starting points, not a ranking. Add nearby towns and neighborhoods as you learn your daily route and housing priorities.
Fernandina Beach is the county seat and sits on Amelia Island, the only inhabited island in the county, alongside the two resorts that together employ more people than the school district. Island addresses and mainland addresses are separate markets — price one against the other before deciding which county you think you are buying into.
Yulee is the largest community in Nassau County and it is unincorporated, so county government answers the questions a city hall would answer elsewhere. Most of the county's growth has been on this side of the water. Check who your permits, roads and code enforcement actually go through before you assume.
Callahan sits inland to the west on the older road network, at the site of the 1778 Battle of Alligator Bridge, and runs on a different pace and a different price from the island. Time the drive from here to wherever your income comes from before you commit to the address.
Hilliard is the county's far northwest, home to a Federal Aviation Administration facility employing around 550 people — a rare thing for a rural Florida town. Look at what is within reach of it day to day, because the island is a long way off.
Five relocation checks
The regional pattern is a starting point. Verify the answer for the exact city, neighborhood and property you are considering.
01Look at the two housing rows together.
A house in Nassau costs $79,300 more than a house in Duval — about 26 percent more.
Renting in Nassau costs $51 a month more than renting in Duval — about 3 percent more.
Buying here carries a quarter-again premium. Renting here is practically the same price as Jacksonville.
If you are moving to the area and you are not certain which side of the county line you want to end up on, that gap is worth a year of your life. Renting in Nassau costs you almost nothing extra and buys you time to find out whether the commute, the schools and the drive to the beach actually suit you before you commit a quarter more capital to the decision.
The catch is in the row underneath. At 82.7 percent homeownership — against Duval's 58.2 — there is not much rental stock here to find. The price is close. The supply is not.
VERIFY LOCALLY BEFORE YOU COMMIT
02Fast-growing counties are usually young ones. Nassau is not.
It is 26.7 percent over 65 and the median age at the 2020 Census was 46.9. It is also growing at nearly three times the rate of Jacksonville.
Both things are true because two different people are arriving. One is retiring to the coast. The other is working in Jacksonville and buying where the houses are newer and the yards are bigger, an extra six minutes each way.
Those two buyers want opposite things from a county — one wants quiet, one wants a road — and they are competing for the same houses. That competition is the reason for the price, and it is a reason to be specific about which of the two you are before you start looking.
VERIFY LOCALLY BEFORE YOU COMMIT
03Nassau's economy sits on three legs that have almost nothing to do with each other.
The largest single employer is the Nassau County School District at about 1,598 people. But the Omni Amelia Island Resort at around 1,200 and the Ritz-Carlton at around 700 employ about 1,900 between them — more than the school district — and both sit on the same barrier island.
Then there is paper. WestRock at around 460 and Rayonier Advanced Materials at around 300, with Rayonier's own operations at 249. This is a mill county and has been for a long time.
And the Federal Aviation Administration employs around 550, at a facility out at Hilliard, which is not something most Florida counties can say.
Luxury resorts, a paper mill and an air traffic facility. Add Jacksonville commuters on top and you have a county whose working population has very little in common with itself.
VERIFY LOCALLY BEFORE YOU COMMIT
04Amelia Island is the county's only inhabited island. Fernandina Beach sits on it and is the county seat. The county runs 726 square miles in total, of which 77 — about 10.6 percent — is water.
But the largest community in Nassau County is Yulee, on the mainland, and Yulee is not a city. It is unincorporated. It has no mayor and no city government of its own.
That is worth knowing before you buy. The biggest place in this county is governed by the county, and questions that a city hall would answer somewhere else get answered in Fernandina Beach here.
Callahan and Hilliard sit west, inland, along the older road network — a different county entirely from the island, in price, in pace and in what a day looks like.
The county was created on December 29, 1824. Callahan was the site of the Battle of Alligator Bridge in 1778, which predates it by forty-six years and predates the state by rather more.
VERIFY LOCALLY BEFORE YOU COMMIT
05Whether you are buying the island or the mainland. They are not the same market and the county-wide figures above describe neither one of them accurately.
Whether you are renting first. At a 3 percent premium on rent against a 26 percent premium on price, the case for taking a year is stronger here than in almost any county in this guide — if you can find something to rent at all.
And whether you are the retiree or the commuter. This county is being bought by both, and the answer decides which half of it you should be standing in.
VERIFY LOCALLY BEFORE YOU COMMITHospitals in Nassau County
From the state's own hospital list. Each card opens the state's record for that hospital: its address, phone, services and inspection reports.
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
Use enduring natural, historic and cultural places to understand the area beyond a real-estate showing.
It was named for General Duncan Lamont Clinch of the Seminole wars. No shot was ever fired at it in anger. Confederate troops held it briefly in 1861 and pulled out in 1862, and Union forces walked back in without a fight, which is the whole of its combat record and a large part of why so much of it survives.
The boundaries were widened on April 20, 1987, and the listing now covers about fifteen hundred acres with roughly three hundred buildings in it, mostly Victorian and Frame Vernacular with Queen Anne touches on the houses. Among them are the Nassau County Courthouse, the train depot, the post office, St. Peter's Episcopal Church and the Fairbanks, Tabby and Bailey houses.
It is a rare thing: undeveloped marsh kept inside the town rather than outside it, bought with help from the Florida Communities Trust and opened to the public in 2000. Three and a half miles of connected trail run through it and a walker can make loops of up to six miles.
There is almost nothing built here, which is the point of it. The park sits on State Road A1A about eight miles south of Fernandina Beach and seven miles north of Little Talbot Island, and the beach runs down to the inlet with no buildings behind it.
It ran a mile between Big Talbot Island and Amelia Island until the new A1A bridge took the traffic. It was going to be demolished, and was saved in 1998 through the work of Florida Representative George Crady, whose name it now carries.
The building went up in 1938 in the Moderne style and held prisoners until the county opened a new jail in 1979. The Duncan Lamont Clinch Historical Society began working toward a museum in 1975, moved it through several homes, and eventually took a ninety-nine year lease on the jail at a dollar a year.
Abraham Lincoln Lewis was president of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company and the first Black millionaire in Florida. In 1935, with Black families barred from the public beaches, the company's pension bureau bought thirty-three acres here and opened a resort of their own; it grew to two hundred and sixteen acres with hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and houses.
The sand here is hard packed and fine, which makes it good for walking and running rather than only for sitting on, and wooden boardwalks carry people over some substantial dunes to reach it. Behind them are restrooms, indoor and outdoor showers, picnic tables and barbecues.
The stone and brick came from the 1820 lighthouse on Cumberland Island, just across the water in Georgia, taken down and carried over. It is a brick tower finished in stucco, fifty feet when it was built and raised to sixty-four in 1881, putting the light a hundred and seven feet above the sea.
This is where the island goes rather than where visitors are steered, and it is laid out accordingly. There are two sand volleyball courts, a playground, a multipurpose court, a skate park, several picnic shelters, restrooms, outdoor showers, a run of beach accesses and a large grassed area for anyone who wants to throw a ball about.
The name means beautiful woods, and the live oaks hung with Spanish moss over the older section explain it. The ground holds more than two centuries of the island's people: shrimping pioneers from the fleet that worked out of Fernandina, Civil War veterans, sea captains, merchants, politicians and family after family of ordinary residents.
Beaches in Nassau County
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.
Not identified here as clothing-optional. This category does not guarantee child safety, calm water or lifeguard coverage.
Nudity is officially permitted in all or part of the destination. Read the current notice before taking children.
Nudity may be encountered in a remote area even without an official clothing-optional designation.
Nassau County, Florida
At Atlantic Avenue and South Fletcher Avenue, and the most equipped beach on the island. Paved parking, a boardwalk, restrooms, outdoor showers, covered picnic tables, barbecues, a volleyball court, a playground, a skate park and multi-purpose courts, with oceanfront restaurants and mini-golf beside it. Lifeguards from Memorial Day to Labor Day. A Mobi-Mat runs out onto the sand and beach wheelchairs can be reserved from the city. Every city park and beach access is closed from midnight to 5:00am.
Nassau County, Florida
At the ocean end of Sadler Road, with a small parking lot, restrooms and dune walkovers. The only city beach where vehicles may drive and park on the sand, and four-wheel drive is needed - cars without it get stuck there regularly. Lifeguards from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Nassau County, Florida
Established in 1935 by A.L. Lewis, Florida's first black millionaire and president of the Afro American Insurance Company, as the first beach resort in the state open to African Americans, with its own motels, restaurants and shops. It declined after segregated beaches ended in the 1960s and developers bought more than half the land. Thirty-three acres are on the National Register of Historic Places and the community sits inside the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Nana, the dune at its heart, is 65 feet high and the tallest on Florida's Atlantic coast. The American Beach Museum is at 1600 Julia Street, open on weekends. Parking and access are at Burney Park at the south end.
Nassau County, Florida
4600 Peters Point Road, off South Fletcher Avenue. A large parking area, restrooms, indoor and outdoor showers, picnic tables and barbecues, and fishing is allowed. Four lifeguard towers are staffed from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The north end of the Amelia Island Trail, 6.2 miles, starts here. Driving and riding a horse on the sand from this access are for Nassau County residents, with exceptions for active military and for disabled permit holders.
Nassau County, Florida
4902 Amelia Island Parkway. A way onto the sand rather than a park, and the county's own name for it says so: Scott Road Beach Access - Drive On. Driving on the beach here is for Nassau County residents.
Nassau County, Florida
1556 Gregg Street, the public park at the south end of American Beach and the way onto that shoreline. A paved parking lot, restrooms, indoor and outdoor showers, a covered gazebo with picnic tables, and fishing is allowed. Lifeguards daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Driving onto the sand from Lewis Street is for Nassau County residents.
Nassau County, Florida
2601 Atlantic Avenue, at the northern tip of the island. $6 per vehicle for two to eight people, $4 for a single-occupant vehicle, $2 on foot or by bicycle, and $2.50 a person for the fort. The park is open 8:00am to sunset and the fort 9:00am to 5:00pm. Swimming is in the Atlantic south of the jetty and there are no lifeguards. Restrooms, dressing rooms and outdoor showers at both beach access boardwalks. Surf fishing along the Atlantic shoreline, and shark teeth wash up here. Sixty-nine campsites in two campgrounds. No dogs on the beach.
Nassau County, Florida
The southern tip of the island - over 200 acres of undeveloped sea island with nothing built behind the dune. One of the few beaches in Florida where you can ride your own horse on the sand; the ranger station handles the arrangements and Nassau County requires manure catch bags. Two large parking areas inside the entrance, and restrooms with an outdoor shower by the bait and tackle area. No lifeguards, and no dogs on the beach. The George Crady Bridge Fishing Pier runs a mile across Nassau Sound from the same entrance, $2 a person, open 8:00am to sunset every day of the year.
Official planning desk
Where these figures came from
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