First Coast is named for the city of Saint Augustine; site of the oldest permanent European settlement in America. The First Coast region of Florida begins along the east coast of the state, from the Georgia border at Amelia Island, along the white sand beaches most of which are now state parks above the city of Jacksonville, through Ponte Vedra, Saint Augustine and Anastasia Island to Palm Coast just north of Daytona Beach.
The First Coast includes the entire counties of Clay, Duval, Flagler, Nassau, and St Johns with the primary cities being Fernandina Beach, Orange Park, Palm Coast, St Augustine and Jacksonville. The landscape consists of a coastal plain with small hills along the bluffs of the St Johns River, the Intracoastal Waterway with its manatees and dolphins.
Quick Facts
- Florida State sales tax is 6%.
- Florida has is no State income tax.
- First Coast total Population is 1.4 million: 71% White, 21% Black, 4% Hispanic and 2% Asian.
- First Coast total Area is 3,680 square miles (9,530 square kilometers) with water making up 15.2%.
First Coast Information
- The Historic city of St Augustine was established in 1565. Interestingly the city of Palm Coast, its First Coast neighbor to the south, did not even exist 40 years ago and is now a well established municipality of some 60,000 people.
- Nearly all of Downtown Jacksonville burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1901.
- Fernandina, in the early 20th century, was the birthplace of the modern commercial Shrimping industry.
- Jacksonville is easily the most populated city in Florida with more than three quarters of a million (782,623) residents.
- More than 50 Blocks of Downtown Fernandina Beach’s homes and buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places.
- Hurricane Dora, over 40 years ago in 1964, was the first and only hurricane to ever make landfall on Florida’s First Coast region.