Ponte Vedra Beach is an unincorporated seaside community in St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Located eighteen miles (29Â km) southeast of downtown Jacksonville and 26 miles (42Â km) north of St. Augustine, it is part of the Jacksonville Beaches area.
The area is known for its resorts including the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club, the Lodge and Club, and the Marriott at Sawgrass. It also lies within St. Johns County, which is the wealthiest county in Florida. Ponte Vedra Beach is an upper-income tourist resort area best known for its association with golf and is home to the PGA Tour and The Players Championship, played at the TPC at Sawgrass, as well as the ATP Tour.
Between the residential neighborhoods lining Ponte Vedra Boulevard there are many points of public beach access. Golf, tennis, boating, wakeboarding, surfing and water skiing are popular activities.
History
Ponte Vedra Beach Aerial Video -
What is now north Florida was visited several times by European explorers in the 16th century, but there is little evidence for them specifically coming to Ponte Vedra Beach. It may have been sighted by Juan Ponce de León during his voyage to Florida in 1513, but as his precise landfall is unknown, this claim can be made by many communities on the east coast of Florida.
The area remained sparsely populated through the late 19th century, even as other seaside communities began to develop to the north. In 1914 minerals were discovered, and a community known as Mineral City grew up around the mining operations. Titanium (ilmenite) extraction was significant, as well as that of zircon and rutile. These minerals were recovered from beach sands by the Buckman and Pritchard Mining Company. The National Lead Company bought Buckman and Pritchard in 1921 and discontinued mining the minerals as demand dropped after World War I. In 1929 it began to develop the area to be similar to The Cloister in Sea Island, Georgia. Colonel Joseph C. Stehlin, who had been with the company in St. Louis, arrived on January 1, 1929 to manage the development.
The company wanted a more impressive name than Mineral City for its resort, so Colonel Stehlin and his wife, Elizabeth (née Morton), went to the library in St. Augustine to research various possibilities for a new name. Since Florida had been under Spanish rule at one time, they looked on an old map and found the name Pontevedra on the Atlantic coast of Spain at approximately the same latitude as Mineral City. The Galician name of the town was derived from a Roman bridge ("ponte vetera" or "old bridge") that spanned the nearby Lérez River centuries earlier. Colonel Stehlin submitted the name to the National Lead board for approval and Mineral City became Ponte Vedra.
Ponte Vedra Club
In the early 1920s, the National Lead Company built a nine-hole golf course designed by Herbert Bertram Strong, one of the founders of the PGA, plus a 12-room clubhouse constructed of logs for the use of its employees. After the company left the area, that real estate became the foundation of the Ponte Vedra Club. Stockton, Whatley, Davin & Co., a local developer, became the owner of the Ponte Vedra Corporation in July 1934.
World War II
During World War II the German submarine U-584 debarked four saboteurs at Ponte Vedra as part of the failed Operation Pastorius. The four German spies, all of whom had previously lived in the United States, came ashore on the night of June 16, 1942 carrying explosives and American money. After landing they strolled up the beach to Jacksonville Beach, where they caught a city bus to Jacksonville and departed by train for Cincinnati and Chicago. The invaders were captured before they could do any damage. They were tried by a military tribunal and executed.
Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass
In 1972, real estate developers broke ground on the 1,100-acre (4.5Â km2) Sawgrass development. In the mid 1970s, Deane Beman, the Commissioner of the PGA golf tour, was looking for a permanent home for the Tournament Players Championship. Many places in northern Florida were being considered. In an attempt to bring positive attention to the area, developer Paul Fletcher offered a 400-acre (1.6Â km2) tract of land to Beman for $1.
Beman could not refuse this one dollar deal for the future home of The Players Championship and the headquarters of the PGA Tour. The Sawgrass Stadium Course has been the permanent home of The Players Championship since 1982.
Geographics
Ponte Vedra Beach is wholly located east of the Intracoastal Waterway, south of the Duval County line, and north of Vilano Beach. The South Ponte Vedra Beach community is commonly considered to be a part of Ponte Vedra Beach. The Ponte Vedra area includes Ponte Vedra, Ponte Vedra Beach, South Ponte Vedra Beach (an area between the Atlantic and Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve), Sawgrass, Palm Valley, and Nocatee. In June 2006, the U.S. Postal Service designated an area to the south and southwest of the 32082 area as Ponte Vedra (as distinct from Ponte Vedra Beach) and assigned it the ZIP code 32081.
Demographics
Median household income in Ponte Vedra Beach is $102,918 and median family income is $109,181. The median age of the people and Ponte Vedra reveals it has 49.0 overall median age of all people which is the 2nd most of all the places in the area. The place with the highest overall median age of all people in the area is Sawgrass with an age of 55.8 measures 13.9% larger. The Ponte Vedra area is known for being a very influential area of North Florida, and boasts one of the best school districts in Florida. Ponte Vedra Beach was 50th on the list of 100 finalists for CNN and Money Magazine's 2005 List of the Best Places to Live. It was the first place in Florida to be named in that year and one of only four areas in the state to make the cut. As of August 1, 2012 the average house costs around $720,000. According to our research of Florida and other state lists there were 3 registered sex offenders living in Ponte Vedra, Florida as of April 10, 2017. The ratio of number of residents in Ponte Vedra to the number of sex offenders is 12,641 to 1.The number of registered sex offenders compared to the number of residents in this city is a lot smaller than the state average.
City statistics
- Population: 27,750
- Median family income (per year): $116,399
- Unemployment (September 2015): 3.8%
- Job growth % (2000â€"2008): 5.27%
- Median home price: $330,000
- Restaurants (within 15 miles): 1,373
- Avg. High temp in July °F: 89.90 °F
- Avg. Low temp in Jan °F: 46.60 °F
- Median age: 48.00
Education
Public primary and secondary schools in Ponte Vedra Beach are administered by the St. Johns County School District. Allen D. Nease High School and Ponte Vedra High School, which was constructed to relieve the overcrowding of Allen D. Nease High School, serve as the two public high schools in the Ponte Vedra area. Alice B. Landrum Middle School is one of the primary, public middle schools in the area. There is also a K-8 school in the area called Valley Ridge Academy. The Ponte Vedra Palm Valley-Rawlings Elementary School serves as one of the primary, public elementary schools (K-5) in the area, as well as Ocean Palms Elementary School.
Ponte Vedra offers private education (K-8) at the Palmer Catholic Academy. Also, the Bolles School has one of their two lower school campuses in Ponte Vedra Beach, and offers education from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade before transferring students to the middle and high schools located in Jacksonville, Florida.
Additionally, the St Johns County Public Library System has a Ponte Vedra Beach branch library.
Notable people
Famous past and present residents of Ponte Vedra:
- Kim Alexis, actress and model
- Ehsan Bayat, Afghan American businessman
- Jason Altmire, U.S. Congressman
- Tony Boselli, professional football player
- Caitlin Brunell, Miss America's Outstanding Teen 2008 (daughter of Mark Brunell)
- Mark Brunell, professional football player and coach
- Shelby Cannon, professional tennis player
- Christina Crawford, dancer and professional wrestler
- Ron DeSantis, U.S. Congressman
- Ron Duguay, professional hockey player and coach
- Bob Duval, professional golfer and author
- David Duval, professional golfer
- Tim Finchem, PGA Tour Commissioner
- Alicia Fox, model, WWE wrestler, actress
- Fred Funk, professional golfer
- Jim Furyk, professional golfer
- Brian Gottfried, professional tennis player
- Michael Huyghue, United Football League Commissioner
- Dan Jenkins, author and sports writer
- Hamilton Jordan, White House Chief of Staff for President Carter
- Jeff Klauk, professional golfer
- E. L. Konigsburg, author
- Billy Kratzert, professional golfer and commentator
- Matt Kuchar, professional golfer
- Bowie Kuhn, lawyer and former MLB Commissioner
- Christian Laettner, professional basketball player
- Mike Lester, cartoonist, illustrator, author
- Frank Lickliter, professional golfer
- Todd Martin, professional tennis player
- Len Mattiace, professional golfer
- Brian Moorman, former professional football player
- Mark McCumber, professional golfer
- Craig McKinley, first National Guard four-star general
- Ben Nowland, professional football player
- Donna Orender, professional athlete and sports executive
- Calvin Peete, pioneer black golfer
- Rick Rhoden, professional athlete
- Fred Rogers, television personality, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
- Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., general and winner of the Medal of Honor
- Michael Russell, professional tennis player
- Vijay Singh, professional golfer
- Nancy Soderberg, foreign policy strategist
- Tim Tebow, professional football & baseball player
- Bill Terry, baseball Hall of Fame member
- G. Kennedy Thompson, former Wachovia CEO
- Bobby Thomson, professional baseball player, star of the "Shot Heard 'Round the World"
- MaliVai Washington, professional tennis player
- Bobby Weed, golf course designer
- Bob Wenzel, college basketball coach and broadcaster
- Rick Wilkins, professional baseball player
- Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Prize winner
See also
- Jacksonville Beaches
- St. Johns County, Florida
- Greater Jacksonville
- National Register of Historic Places listings in St. Johns County, Florida
References
External links
- Official website
- Geographic data related to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida at OpenStreetMap