Port St. Lucie
Start with Port St. Lucie to understand the established center, nearby services and everyday rhythm within St. Lucie County.
Complete Florida county guide
St. Lucie
County
One of the Treasure Coast’s major growth areas, balancing newer residential communities with Fort Pierce’s working waterfront, cultural life and port history.
Sunrise FloridaAtlantic Coast
REGIONAtlantic Coast
COMMUNITIES TO START WITHPort St. Lucie · Fort Pierce · St. Lucie Village
LIFESTYLE SIGNALSGrowth · Newer homes · Waterfront
Start with daily life
What St. Lucie County feels like before you choose a neighborhood.
One of the Treasure Coast’s major growth areas, balancing newer residential communities with Fort Pierce’s working waterfront, cultural life and port history.
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
- 360,500Census estimate
- At the last full count
- 329,2262020 Census
- Median age
- 45.1
- Aged 65 and over
- 24.6%
- Under 18
- 19.7%
- Median household income
- $71,457
- Median home value
- $347,300what owners estimate
- Homeownership
- 78.6%
- People per household
- 2.60
- Average commute
- 29.3 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
GrowthNewer homesWaterfront
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.
Fort Pierce
Use Fort Pierce to compare housing patterns, main-road access and the shopping or medical stops used during a normal week.
St. Lucie Village
Walk or drive through St. Lucie Village at different times of day to judge traffic, neighborhood character and access to outdoor space.
Hospitals in St. Lucie County
Four 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.
Fort Pierce
HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital
497 licensed beds
The state's record ↗Port St. LucieHCA Florida St. Lucie Hospital
282 licensed beds
The state's record ↗Port St. LucieCleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital
177 licensed beds
The state's record ↗Port St. LucieFlorida Coast Medical Center
54 licensed beds
The state's record ↗The state licenses one more hospital in St. Lucie County with no emergency room; its list names it.
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.
Fort Pierce Inlet State Park
The park sits on North Hutchinson Island between the Atlantic and Tucker Cove, taking in dune, beach and coastal hammock along the Indian River Lagoon. Half a mile of it is beach. What makes it different from most beach parks is the offshore reef, roughly a hundred yards out, which brings snorkelers and divers in on calm days and makes the surf break the way surfers want it on rough ones.
Heathcote Botanical Gardens
The site began in 1960 as a commercial nursery run by the landscape architect Molly Crimmons and her husband Jim. In 1986 it became a botanical garden, paid for by local subscription with help from the City of Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County and the State of Florida.
National Navy SEAL Museum
Fort Pierce is where this belongs. The Navy trained its first Underwater Demolition Teams on these beaches during the Second World War, swimming out to clear the obstacles ahead of landings, and the men who did it came back to found a museum.
Manatee Observation and Education Center
The center sits at 480 North Indian River Drive on Moore's Creek, a lagoon inlet beside a marina and a few steps from downtown Fort Pierce. Manatees use the creek through the year rather than only in winter, which is unusual, though they are wild and nobody promises a sighting.
Oxbow Eco-Center
The preserve covers 225 acres along the North Fork of the St. Lucie River at 5400 Northeast St. James Drive, and it takes its name from the oxbows, the old bends the river cut and then abandoned, which now sit as curved ponds beside the channel. Boardwalks, paths and observation towers carry visitors through wetland and hammock without tearing the ground up.
St. Lucie County Aquarium
The aquarium runs to about 5,000 square feet with six main exhibits and roughly 8,000 gallons of water in total, which makes it small by the standards of the big coastal aquariums and worth the visit for a different reason. Its centerpiece is the Smithsonian Marine Ecosystems Exhibit, a 3,000-gallon working model of a coral reef ecosystem that was built and studied at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington and transferred here in 2000.
Savannas Preserve State Park
The savannas are a basin marsh, a wet grassland lying in a shallow trough behind the coastal ridge, and this is the largest one left anywhere in southeast Florida. The park runs more than seven thousand acres along that trough between Fort Pierce and Jensen Beach, mostly open grassland with scattered South Florida slash pine standing in it.
Port St. Lucie Botanical Gardens
The gardens opened in March 2010 and cover 21 acres, run by the Friends of the Port St. Lucie Botanical Gardens, a nonprofit educational foundation, rather than by the city directly. That volunteer effort is most of why the place exists and most of why it recovered after storms knocked it about.
Clover Park
The ballpark opened on March 5, 1988, as Thomas J. White Stadium, named for the St. Louis developer who did the work of bringing the Mets to Port St. Lucie in the first place. It cost about eleven million dollars to build, which would be something near thirty million now.
A.E. Backus Museum & Gallery
Albert Ernest Backus, known as Bean, painted Florida for fifty years and left something near 5,000 works behind when he died in 1990. He worked mainly from the 1940s through the 1960s, painting rivers, hammocks, lakes and beaches, which means his canvases record a Florida that largely no longer exists.
Sunrise Theatre
The Sunrise opened on August 1, 1923, at 117 South Second Street, designed by John N. Sherwood in Mediterranean Revival style and built by C.E. Cahow.
Tradition Square
Tradition is a master-planned community on the western edge of Port St. Lucie, and Tradition Square is the center it was built around. The design is deliberately old-fashioned: an open green lawn, an old-style town hall building at one end, an interactive fountain, and a lake behind, with shops and restaurants facing the square so people arrive on foot rather than parking outside a single store.
Beaches in St. Lucie County
Every beach, one clear card.
11BEACH 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.
Pepper Park Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
A 52-acre county park at 3302 North State Road A1A, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and one of the two guarded beaches in the county. Shallow reefs sit less than 100 yards off the sand, and the Urca de Lima, the state's first underwater archaeological preserve, lies in about 20 feet of water offshore. Tennis, basketball and volleyball courts, a softball field, a playground, grills, picnic tables, restrooms and pavilions that can be rented.
Fort Pierce Inlet State Park Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
A half mile of beach at 905 Shorewinds Drive, open 8 a.m. until sundown, 365 days a year. Entry is $6 a vehicle for up to eight people, $4 for a single occupant or a motorcycle and $2 on foot or by bicycle. Swimming, snorkeling, surfing and scuba diving, with a picnic pavilion, restrooms, a shower and parking. Dynamite Point at the north end trained Navy frogmen in the Second World War and is now a bird-watching spot.
South Beach Park
St. Lucie County, Florida
A City of Fort Pierce park where South State Road A1A meets Crestview Drive. Beach access, a deck, a pavilion, picnic tables, a grill, restrooms and a shower. City parks are open from sunrise to sunset unless a sign says otherwise, and the pavilion is reserved in person at the River Walk Community Center rather than by telephone.
Blue Heron Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
Four acres at 2101 Blue Heron Boulevard, open dawn until dusk, with paved parking for 30 vehicles and a forested restoration area beside the lot. Beach access, swimming and fishing.
Frederick Douglass Memorial Park Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
At 3600 South Ocean Drive, open dawn until dusk, and named after Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, editor and author. Horseback riding is allowed on the beach here with a county permit. Beach access, swimming, fishing, picnic tables, pavilions and restrooms.
Blind Creek Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
A mile and a half of undeveloped, dune-backed shoreline on 108 acres inside a 409-acre coastal preserve at 5460 South Ocean Drive. The county designated it clothing-optional on June 2, 2020, the only sanctioned site of its kind on the Treasure Coast. Open sunrise to sunset, free to enter and to park, with no lifeguards. There is a dune crossover, a shaded shelter, a short interpretive trail and a tower looking over the lagoon. Pets, alcohol, glass and fires are not permitted.
Expect an officially designated clothing-optional area. Read the current county notice before visiting.
Walton Rocks Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
Twenty-four acres at 6700 South Ocean Drive, open dawn until dusk, and the county's off-leash dog beach, where dogs can run in the sand and the surf. A dog that bothers other dogs or people has to go on a leash of no more than eight feet. Beach access, swimming, fishing, picnic tables, pavilions and restrooms.
Waveland Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
At 10350 South Ocean Drive, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the southernmost guarded beach in the county. Restrooms and a swimming area, and the start of a 13.2-mile bike path that runs north along A1A.
Normandy Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
One acre at 8550 South Ocean Drive with eight paved parking spaces and a single pavilion, open dawn until dusk. It is named for the Normandy invasion training the military ran at Fort Pierce in the 1940s. Beach access, swimming and fishing.
Herman’s Bay Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
One acre at 7880 South Ocean Drive, open dawn until dusk, with three covered pavilions, picnic tables and a dune crossover onto the sand. Beach access, swimming and fishing.
Dollman Beach
St. Lucie County, Florida
At 9200 South Ocean Drive, open dawn until dusk, inside a 143-acre preserve that runs from the beach back to the river. Paved parking, picnic tables and pavilions, restrooms and outdoor showers to rinse the sand off. Beach access, swimming and fishing.
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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