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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Pensacola Beach, Florida

We are staying in a rental condominium here in Pensacola Beach.  This beachfront community is unique along the Gulf Coast.  It lies on a narrow island which is primarily preserved as national seashore and state park.  It also lies rather directly south of the good-sized city of Pensacola, population 55,000.

Pensacola Beach developed as a community back in the late 1940's when the Department of the Interior agreed to lease a portion of the island.  The individuals who leased lots here obtained a benefit of no property taxes for quite a number of years before the local assessor and the state legislature put an end to that.  A tax case is still bouncing around the courts trying to regain the local's loophole.

The real attraction here is the sand.  It's white.  Very white!  The sand is said to be quartz that washed down from the Appalachian mountains a long time ago.
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While there are only about 2700 residents in Pensacola Beach, they have a wide variety of homes.  There are several condominiums such as the one we are staying in, but most of the area is covered with single family dwellings.

Some are concrete block on a slab, probably typical of the earliest vacation homes built here.
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Most newer homes are built on "stilts" and tend to be quite a bit larger.
PensacolBeach-02 PensacolBeach-06 PensacolBeach-28

I suppose this one could be described as "modern."
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And this one, well - post modern?
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By the way, if you look closely, I believe that you can see one of the residents looking back at me from a window.
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