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.
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