Local Color

From Coastal Living Magazine ...

Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University in Miami, does scientific studies of the shore and its environmental matters. He has provided expert testimony to the U.S. Congress about those topics on 10 occasions.

Grayton Beach Has Seen Many Changes

By DeLene Sholes

Grayton Beach, The Most Beautiful Beach in America
story & photos by Doug Pinkston

Sea turtle nesting season runs from May 1 through October 31. The first sea turtle nest in Walton County is usually found the third week in May. These nests are found by walking the beach early in the morning and looking for tracks left by the female when she comes ashore to nest. The tracks look like large tractor tracks that begin and end at the water line.

by Lori Ceier, WaltonOutdoors.com

What you’ll read in the magazines and travel guides about Grayton Beach:
also see ecotourism page...

If you walk down one of Grayton Beach's oyster-shell roads, you may have the feeling things don't change very fast here. Pine and oak trees surround many of the old wooden homes, letting a visitor know the homes have been in place longer than the trees have been. This south Walton County village, which celebrated its 110th anniversary July 4th, 2000, stakes a claim as one of the area's oldest communities.

  Grayton Beach had its beginnings when an Army major, Charles T. Gray, built a homestead here about 1885, according to the telling of the village's history by the Coastal Heritage Preservation Foundation. At the time, the federal government owned much of the land and a few people had reason to settle here. The soil was too sandy to farm and there were better timberlands inland. The closest settlement was about five miles to the north, at Point Washington on Choctawhatchee Bay. Gray got some neighbors in 1890 when Army General William Miller and William Wilson moved their families here and mapped out where the village's streets and blocks would be built. The named their new community after Gray. The only building still standing in Grayton Beach that is thought to date back to about 1890 is a two-story home, known today as the Wash-A-Way, at the end of County Road 283.