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Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida | |
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      Left to right from top: Palm Valley Bridge, Sunrise at Ponte Vedra Beach, Milam House, designed byPaul Rudolph, 17th hole atTPC Sawgrass, Military Appreciation Day atThe Players Championship,Great White Egret in a local estuary. | |
 Location inSt. Johns County and the state ofFlorida | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Florida |
| County | St. Johns |
| Area | |
• Total | 33.8 sq mi (88 km2) |
| Population (2016) | |
• Total | 29,495[1] |
| • Density | 858/sq mi (331/km2) |
| ZIP code | 32082 |
| Area codes | 904, 324 |
Ponte Vedra Beach is a large islandunincorporated community and suburb ofJacksonville, Florida located on San Pablo Island inSt. Johns County, Florida, United States. Located in theJacksonville metropolitan area, 18 miles (29 km) southeast of downtown Jacksonville and 26 miles (42 km) north ofSt. Augustine, it is part of theJacksonville Beaches area, and is situated onSan Pablo Island.[2]
The area is known for itsseaside resorts, including thePonte Vedra Inn and Club, the Lodge and Club, and the Marriott at Sawgrass. It lies within St. Johns County, which is the wealthiest county in Florida.[3] Ponte Vedra Beach is an upper-incometourist resort area best known for its association with golf and is home to thePGA Tour andThe Players Championship, hosted atTPC Sawgrass.
The area remained sparsely populated through the late 19th century, even as other seaside communities began to develop to the north. Minerals were discovered in 1914, and a community known asMineral City grew around the mining operations. These minerals, mostly titanium (ilmenite),zircon, andrutile were recovered from beach sands by theBuckman and Pritchard Mining Company.[4] TheNational Lead Company bought Buckman and Pritchard in 1921 and discontinued mining as demand dropped afterWorld War I. In 1929 it began to develop the area to be similar to The Cloister inSea Island, Georgia. Colonel Joseph C. Stehlin, who had been with the company in St. Louis, arrived on January 1, 1929, to manage development.[5]
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, they looked on an old map and found the namePontevedra on the Atlantic coast of Spain at "approximately" the same latitude as Mineral City.[5] (Pontevedra, Spain, however, is over 800 miles farther north at about the same latitude asBoston.) TheGalician name of the town was derived from a Roman bridge ("pontis vetera" or "old bridge") that spanned the nearbyLérez River centuries earlier. Colonel Stehlin submitted the name to the National Lead board for approval and Mineral City became Ponte Vedra.[5]
In the early 1920s, the National Lead Company built a nine-hole golf course designed byHerbert Bertram Strong, one of the founders of thePGA, plus a 12-room clubhouse constructed of logs for the use of its employees.[6] 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.[5][7]
DuringWorld War II theGerman submarine U-584 debarked four saboteurs at Ponte Vedra as part of the failedOperation Pastorius.[8] 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 toJacksonville Beach, where they caught a city bus toJacksonville and departed by train forCincinnati and Chicago. The invaders were captured before they could do any damage. They were tried by a military tribunal and executed.[9]
In 1972,real estate developers broke ground on the 1,100-acre (4.5 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 (1.6 km2) tract of land to Beman for $1.
Beman could not refuse thisone dollar deal for the future home ofThe Players Championship and the headquarters of thePGA Tour. The Sawgrass Stadium Course has been the permanent home ofThe Players Championship since 1982.
Ponte Vedra Beach is wholly located east of theIntracoastal Waterway, south of the Duval County line, and north ofVilano Beach. TheSouth 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 andGuana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve),Sawgrass, andPalm Valley. In June 2006, theU.S. Postal Service designated an area to the south and southwest of the 32082 area asPonte Vedra (as distinct fromPonte Vedra Beach) and assigned it theZIP code 32081.
Median household income in Ponte Vedra Beach is $150,646[10] and median family income is $109,181.[11] The median age is 41.8. The Ponte Vedra area is known for being a very affluent area of North Florida, and boasts one of the best school districts in Florida.[11] Ponte Vedra Beach was 50th on the list of 100 finalists forCNN 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.[11] As of April 1, 2024 the average house costs around $898,000.[12]
Publicprimary andsecondary schools in Ponte Vedra Beach are administered by theSt. Johns County School District.Ponte Vedra High School, which functions as the public high school of Ponte Vedra Beach,[13] was constructed to relieve the overcrowding ofAllen D. Nease High School.[citation needed] Alice B. Landrum Middle School is the public middle school in the area.[14] 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.[15]
Ponte Vedra offers private education (K-8) at the Palmer Catholic Academy. Also, theBolles School has one of its 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 inJacksonville, Florida.[16]
Additionally, theSt Johns County Public Library System has aPonte Vedra Beach Branch library.[17]
Famous past and present residents of Ponte Vedra:
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30°14′N81°23′W / 30.233°N 81.383°W /30.233; -81.383
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