About Clearwater Beach

For most of its history, this stretch of sand was unreachable. A barrier island off Florida's Gulf Coast, 2.5 miles of white sand and shallow, clear water with nobody around. Local fishermen knew it. The occasional visitor who managed the crossing from the mainland knew it. Everyone else had no way to get there.

That changed in 1915 when the first bridge went up across Clearwater Harbor. Twelve years later, the Memorial Causeway replaced it. Locals called it the "Million Dollar Causeway," and people started showing up. The island went from isolated sandbar to accessible destination in the span of a single construction project.

The hospitality industry arrived after World War II. Hotel Cabana was built in 1947. Bob Heilman's Beachcomber opened the next year, in 1948, and is still serving guests. A restaurant that has outlasted nearly every building around it. Pier 60 followed in June 1962, stretching 1,080 feet into the Gulf and taking its name from State Road 60, which terminates at the beach.

Then the sunsets got organized. In 1995, the nightly Sunsets at Pier 60 celebration started. Street performers, artisans, musicians, every evening, two hours before and after sunset. Three decades later, it hasn't missed a night. Most beach towns have a sunset. Clearwater Beach turned theirs into a daily civic event.

Beach Walk, completed in 2008, connected the beachfront hotels and restaurants with a pedestrian promenade along the Gulf. You can walk from dinner to the pier to your hotel without crossing a parking lot. The Sandpearl Resort, Hyatt Regency, and Sheraton Sand Key sit along that stretch. So do the casual spots where nobody cares if you're still in your swimsuit.

TripAdvisor has ranked it the #1 beach in America. Travel + Leisure put it among the 15 best white-sand beaches in the world. USA Today readers keep voting for it. The rankings explain why people book flights. They don't explain what it's like to stand in water clear enough to see your feet at waist depth, on sand white enough to squeak underfoot.

About 10,000 people live here year-round. Millions visit. The island knows the difference between tourist season and the months when locals get their restaurants back. Fall is when the water is still warm, the crowds thin out, and the light turns golden for weeks. If you've only seen Clearwater Beach between December and April, you've seen the crowded version.

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