Ask a longtime Panama City resident what they know about St. Andrews State Park and you'll get the same three facts every time. It's the park at the east end of the beach where the bay meets the Gulf. It's where you take out-of-town guests for the good sand without the Pier Park crowds. And somewhere back in 2018, Hurricane Michael tore through it.
What most people haven't clocked is that the park quietly finished rebuilding into something better than what the storm took, and 2026 is the year the rest of the country noticed. The park turned 75 this year, and in February, Tripadvisor's 2026 Travelers' Choice Awards ranked it No. 8 among the best beaches in the entire United States, with Panama City Beach landing at No. 11 on the same list. That kind of national attention rarely lands on a park mid-repair. It landed here because the repair is done, and it upgraded the place in ways the pre-storm version never had.
The Park and the Neighborhood That Share Its Name Are Not the Same Place
Before getting into what changed, it's worth clearing up a mix-up that trips up even people who've lived here for years. St. Andrews State Park sits off State Road 392, better known as Thomas Drive, at the far east end of Panama City Beach. The historic St. Andrews neighborhood, the one with Hunt's Oyster Bar and Uncle Ernie's Bayfront Grill & Brewhouse, sits inside Panama City proper, a good drive west along the bay. Both carry the St. Andrews name because both front St. Andrew Bay, but they are separate places with separate zip codes and separate personalities. If a visiting friend says they're heading to "St. Andrews," it's worth asking which one before you give directions.
Hurricane Michael Forced a Rebuild. The Rebuild Became an Upgrade.
The category 5 storm that hit in October 2018 did real damage here. Trees snapped into A-frames, storm surge wrecked electric and plumbing systems, and the picnic pavilions at the jetty were destroyed outright. What followed wasn't a patch job. The campground reinvestment project, done in phases starting in March 2021, rebuilt the West Loop with full water, electric, and sewer hookups at every site, something the pre-storm campground didn't uniformly offer. Sites were elevated specifically to prevent the flooding that used to follow heavy rain, and new stormwater drains went in to back that up. The Florida State Parks project page lays out the same pattern on the jetty side: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rebuilt the inlet jetty with boulder revetment on both sides to protect boat traffic moving between the Gulf and the bay, and new picnic pavilions replaced the ones Michael leveled.
| Before Hurricane Michael (pre-2018) | After the rebuild (current) | |
|---|---|---|
| Campsite hookups | Mixed, not uniformly full-service | Full water, electric, sewer at every West Loop site |
| Flood exposure | Sites at original grade | Sites elevated, new stormwater drains added |
| Jetty pavilions | Original structures | Rebuilt, with boulder revetment protecting the inlet |
| Overnight options | Traditional tent and RV camping only | Camping plus six water-view glamping eco-tents |
That last row is the one that changes how locals should think about the park. Storm recovery rebuilt what existed. It didn't add a new category of overnight stay. That came separately, and it's the more interesting story.
Six Tents Turned a Day-Trip Park Into an Overnight Option
Somewhere in the last couple of years, the park added glamping. Six eco-tents, each with a water view, each outfitted with electricity, a queen bed, and a twin cot for a kid or a second guest. This isn't a tent you pitch yourself and hope doesn't leak. It's a reservable, furnished unit sitting inside a park most residents have only ever visited between 9 a.m. and sundown. For anyone who has lived here long enough to think of St. Andrews as strictly a beach-day destination, that's the update worth sitting with. The park you drive to and leave by dinner now has a version where you don't leave at all, and you don't need your own tent, sleeping bag, or camping gear to do it.
The Ranking and the Anniversary Landed the Same Year for a Reason
St. Andrews opened in 1951 on land that had served as a World War II military reservation, which explains both its size and its long, undeveloped shoreline. Seventy-five years later, in the same year Tripadvisor put it at No. 8 nationally for beaches, the timing isn't coincidence so much as delayed recognition catching up with finished work. A park doesn't climb a national ranking list mid-construction. It climbs after the construction zones come down, the pavilions reopen, and word gets around that the sand, the water, and now the tents are worth the drive. Local coverage of the anniversary frames it the same way: 75 years of operation, arriving at the exact moment the rebuild finally caught up to the reputation.
The park's own history has one detail most visitors never hear. A man named Theodore Tollofson shipwrecked here during a 1929 hurricane and homesteaded in his derelict boat for the next 25 years, earning the nickname Teddy the Hermit long before the land became a state park. It's a small piece of trivia, but it says something true about the place: people have been finding reasons to stay a while since long before glamping tents existed.
What Isn't Finished Yet
Not every project is complete, and locals who like to track this kind of thing should know what's still coming. A future improvement funded through the Natural Resource Damage Assessment program, the settlement fund tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, will reconfigure the park's entrance, add a walking path alongside the main park drive, and repave that drive entirely. Separately, the Friends of St. Andrews State Park used a grant from the St. Joe Community Foundation to fund a new playground at the lagoon picnic area, with a second phase of fundraising still underway for additional children's activities and amenities. Neither project has a firm completion date yet, which means the story here isn't over. It's a good one to check back on next year.
Before You Go: The Two Fees Nobody Explains Well
If you're taking a Shell Island trip for the first time, or the first time in a few years, two things trip people up. First, park admission and the Shell Island Shuttle ticket are billed separately. Entrance runs $8 per vehicle carrying two to eight people, $4 for a single-occupant vehicle, and $2 for pedestrians and cyclists, but the ferry crossing to Shell Island is its own ticket on top of that. Second, the shuttle schedule shifts by season, running roughly every 30 minutes from 9 to 5 in summer and stretching to hourly departures in winter. Confirm the current board before you buy, since weather and water conditions can move the schedule around on any given day.
Where to Go Before or After
If you're headed to the park from the Panama City side rather than straight down Thomas Drive, the historic St. Andrews neighborhood is worth a stop either way. Hunt's Oyster Bar and Uncle Ernie's Bayfront Grill & Brewhouse both sit in that older waterfront neighborhood and count as local standbys rather than tourist stops. Closer to the park itself, on Grand Lagoon, Capt. Anderson's Marina has been running fishing charters and dockside dining since 1935, family owned the entire time, and its restaurant remains one of the few dinner spots where you can watch the boats that caught your food come back in.
Seventy-five years is a long run for any piece of public land, and this one spent a chunk of the last decade rebuilding from a storm most of us remember too clearly. What's easy to miss, if you haven't been back recently, is that the version standing today isn't a restoration. It's an upgrade that happened to require a hurricane to get funded.
If you're weighing what a home near St. Andrews Bay, the park, or the historic St. Andrews neighborhood actually costs to own, or what waterfront access is worth to your specific situation, that's the kind of local read The Sostheim Group works through with clients every week. Contact us when you're ready to talk it through.
