Origin of Term
Beginning in 1946, for marketing purposes the coast from Fort Walton Beach to Panama City was called the "Playground of the Gulfcoast", as witnessed by the name of the Fort Walton Beach newspaper, the Playground News, later the Playground Daily News, now the Northwest Florida Daily News. In 1952, this particular stretch of coast was dubbed the "Miracle Strip" by Claude Jenkins, a local journalist, a term which is still reflected in the name of the Miracle Strip Amusement Park and other local businesses.
According to the Daily News, the term Emerald Coast was coined in 1983 by a junior high school student, Andrew Dier, who won $50 in the contest for a new area slogan. Since then, the term has been expanded by popular usage to cover all of the northwest coast of Florida from Pensacola Beach to Panama City Beach. Since most of the region's visitors have historically been from other parts of the South (in contrast to Gold Coast beaches at the lower end of the Florida peninsua), since the 1980's a disparaging term for the area has been the "Redneck Riviera," which is sometimes considered to stretch as far west as Gulf Shores, Alabama.
Read more about this topic: Emerald Coast
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or term:
“The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.”
—Georges Bataille (18971962)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“The term preschooler signals another change in our expectations of children. While toddler refers to physical development, preschooler refers to a social and intellectual activity: going to school. That shift in emphasis is tremendously important, for it is at this age that we think of children as social creatures who can begin to solve problems.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)