Destin History & Fishing Museum in Okaloosa County, Florida

Photograph: Destin Fishing Museum01.jpg by Ebyabe · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Cropped to the 1200x750 attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Opened and checked against the place before installation.

Okaloosa County attraction

Destin History & Fishing Museum

Okaloosa County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

The story of Destin's fishing village, with the Primrose, the oldest seine fishing boat still in existence.

QUESTIONS THAT NAME THIS PLACE

Where Do You Go Deep Sea Fishing in Florida?

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Destin History & Fishing Museum at 108 Stahlman Avenue keeps the record of Destin's beginnings as a fishing village at East Pass in the 1830s: photographs of the early settlers and boat captains, a hundred feet of wall hung with mounted fish laid out like the Gulf floor, a rod and reel that belonged to Ernest Hemingway, and the Primrose, a seine fishing boat built in 1925 and the oldest still in existence. The restored original Destin post office stands beside it. The museum opened to the public on October 1, 2005, and is run by a nonprofit board rather than by the city. It stands near the Destin bridge, across from the community center. Besides the Primrose and the Hemingway reel it holds vintage photographs, antique rods and reels, fish mounts and replicas, and historic documents, and the whole arrangement is built to show how Destin went from a small fishing village to a resort town inside a single lifetime. It is not accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, which for a museum this size is ordinary rather than a mark against it. The Primrose turned a hundred years old in 2025 and the town held a festival for it

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

MOVING TO OKALOOSA COUNTY?Fourteen services. One business each.

Attorneys, movers, insurance, title companies, roofers and nine more — one listed business per service in Okaloosa County.

See local help in Okaloosa County →

Keep comparing

Return to the Things to Do choices in Okaloosa County.

Back to Okaloosa County