Sunshine Matters

I am pleased to announce that on Friday three Florida beaches – St. George Island State Park, Barefoot Beach Preserve County Park and Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park – were named to Dr. Beach’s annual Top Ten Beaches in America list.

VISIT FLORIDA shared the news with our travel media contacts, reminding them that many of the Sunshine State’s beaches have made Dr. Beach history over the years.  Since the inception of the coveted list in 1991, the beaches of Florida and the Hawaiian Islands have dominated the No. 1 rankings.  Florida beaches, which have won the top honor seven out of 23 times, were judged to be tops in terms of sand quality, water quality, and a long list of other measures.

Here are the seven Florida beaches that have previously reached No. 1:

• Bahia Honda State Recreation Area (1992), now a state park, in the Florida Keys.
• Grayton Beach State Recreation Area (1994), now a state park, in Walton County
• St. Andrew’s State Recreation Area (1995), now a state park, in Bay County, Panama City Beach
• St. Joseph Peninsula State Park (2002) in Gulf County, near Port St. Joe
• Fort De Soto Park, North Beach (2005) in Pinellas County, St. Petersburg/Clearwater
• Caladesi Island State Park (2008) in Pinellas County, St. Petersburg/Clearwater
• Siesta Key Beach (2011), near Sarasota

To learn much more about Dr. Stephen Leatherman’s 2013 list and Florida’s history of winning, check out our digital press release on PitchEngine.  As an added bonus, PitchEngine has made this its featured release for today, pushing it out to more than 8,400 media and followers via Twitter.