HISTORY & HERITAGE
Historic St. Andrews
Bay County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
The old town on the bay, settled in 1827, where the wharf and the marina mark where Panama City began.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
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. The town was incorporated in 1908 and annexed by Panama City in 1926. From 1879 Lambert and Francis Ware ran Ware's Wharf on what are now the Harbour Village and St. Andrews Marina sites, and the steamship SS Tarpon called regularly with supplies until she sank in 1937. Through the middle of the twentieth century the charter boats, restaurants and shops here made St. Andrews a destination in its own right. That trade fell away sharply once Panama City Beach was developed, which is why the old town is quieter today than its history suggests. The town was destroyed in 1863, during the Civil War, because the salt works here were supplying the Confederacy and the Union navy came for them. In the Second World War the Wainwright Shipyard built thirty-three Liberty Ships on this waterfront. The wreck of the SS Tarpon is now an underwater archaeological preserve. St. Andrews was made a community redevelopment area in 1989 and was taken into the first round of the Waterfronts Florida program in 1997, which is what has been turning the old town around
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