Choctawhatchee Bay in Walton County, Florida

Photograph: Choctawhatchee Bay.JPG by Skye Marthaler · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Walton County attraction

Choctawhatchee Bay

Walton County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

An estuary twenty-seven miles long and six miles wide, covering 129 square miles across Walton and Okaloosa counties.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

It is about forty-three feet deep at the deepest and drains a catchment of 5,405 square miles, most of it through the Choctawhatchee River, which once carried timber and farm goods down to the water. The bay has one direct outlet to the Gulf, East Pass at Destin, and that pass was an accident: in 1929 local people dug a trench and the sea widened it into a channel. The larger opening raised the salinity and changed the whole ecosystem. The Intracoastal Waterway runs through, joining Santa Rosa Sound to the west and St. Andrews Bay to the east. Two bridges cross it, the Mid-Bay Bridge on State Road 293 between Destin and Niceville and the Judge Clyde B. Wells Bridge carrying US 331 from Freeport to the coast. Red drum, spotted seatrout, sheepshead, Spanish mackerel, flounder and mullet are all taken here. Seagrass and oyster reef restoration is ongoing. A wartime radar target range at Eglin left 2,040 wood pilings standing in the water

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗

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

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

See local help in Walton County →

Keep comparing

Return to the Things to Do choices in Walton County.

Back to Walton County