News
Openings, closures, festival dates and beach notices for Fort Walton. Every item is dated, says where the facts came from, and points back at the pages that explain the practical side.
Front page
The food boats, slides and floating bars look permanent. They are not, and the arrangements that govern them shape what your day out there is actually like.
Photograph: Unsplash
One four-lane bridge from 1966 carries everyone to the beach, and it is being replaced around the traffic. Approach roads have already moved once.
Photograph: Unsplash
Visitors read the double red flag as strong advice. In Okaloosa County it closes the water under ordinance, and going in can cost you.
Photograph: Unsplash
A tournament that has run every October since 1948, a seafood festival on the boardwalk, and the best month of the year to be on this water.
October 1 – October 31
Photograph: Unsplash
Archive
Longleaf pine, steephead ravines and clear sand-bottom creeks, on a live weapons range. The permit is easy. The daily closure check is not optional.
Photograph: Unsplash
Two different seasons run on the same water, and which one applies to you depends on the permit held by the boat you are standing on.
Photograph: Unsplash
Loggerheads, greens and the occasional leatherback nest on this coast for six months of the year, and the rules that protect them are small and easy to keep.
Photograph: Unsplash
A four-day civic pantomime at Fort Walton Landing in which the mayor is captured on the waterfront and the city is formally handed over to pirates.
Photograph: Unsplash