A compact beach community found just east of Pensacola at the far northwestern tip of the state, Navarre beckons with 12 miles of pristine white shoreline. Nestled between Gulf Islands National Seashore and Navarre Beach County Park, this beach community offers solitude and simplicity. Its pristine beaches are named among the best in the nation year after year, and visitors compare crossing Navarre Bridge to transcending paradise time and time again. And so, relaxation is the main attraction here. Visitors can sun on the beach, swim in emerald waters, enjoy a picnic in the park or pedal along a scenic bike path.
The area is known to have some of the most stunning beaches in the world, famous for their sugar white sands and warm, emerald-green waters. For many years, the beaches were deemed to have the whitest sand in the world where it sparkled in the sunshine and squeaked when walked on.
A popular misconception among tourist and even many locals is that the sand is bleached by the sun. This sand, in the truest sense of the word, is not sand at all but Appalachian Quartz that filtered it's way down to the coast from the Appalachian mountains 20,000 years after the last ice age, when the glaciers melted.
That sand dune you are looking at today was perhaps once, thousands of years ago, a mountain top near the Georgia-South Carolina border.
Sediment reaching the Gulf along the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, and Mississippi coasts is almost entirely from erosion of hard rocks in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Quartz, a hard, durable mineral, survives transport by fast-moving streams, while softer minerals break down and dissolve, or remain suspended in the water. Sedimentary particles available for deposition along the northeastern Gulf Coast are thus pure white quartz.
Fast moving streams bring mostly grains of clear white quartz the short distance across the coastal plain to the Gulf of Mexico where it was moved by powerful alongshore currents westward. These currents gradually deposited the quartz on thin ridges of sediment on the shallow sea floor leaving the white crystals to pile up and eventually form our beautiful beaches and barrier islands.
All this creates the perfect place to relax and enjoy. Check out the Navarre Beach Webite at: https://www.getrelaxing.com
The area is known to have some of the most stunning beaches in the world, famous for their sugar white sands and warm, emerald-green waters. For many years, the beaches were deemed to have the whitest sand in the world where it sparkled in the sunshine and squeaked when walked on.
A popular misconception among tourist and even many locals is that the sand is bleached by the sun. This sand, in the truest sense of the word, is not sand at all but Appalachian Quartz that filtered it's way down to the coast from the Appalachian mountains 20,000 years after the last ice age, when the glaciers melted.
That sand dune you are looking at today was perhaps once, thousands of years ago, a mountain top near the Georgia-South Carolina border.
Sediment reaching the Gulf along the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, and Mississippi coasts is almost entirely from erosion of hard rocks in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Quartz, a hard, durable mineral, survives transport by fast-moving streams, while softer minerals break down and dissolve, or remain suspended in the water. Sedimentary particles available for deposition along the northeastern Gulf Coast are thus pure white quartz.
Fast moving streams bring mostly grains of clear white quartz the short distance across the coastal plain to the Gulf of Mexico where it was moved by powerful alongshore currents westward. These currents gradually deposited the quartz on thin ridges of sediment on the shallow sea floor leaving the white crystals to pile up and eventually form our beautiful beaches and barrier islands.
All this creates the perfect place to relax and enjoy. Check out the Navarre Beach Webite at: https://www.getrelaxing.com