Welcome to Pinellas County

Pinellas County is a peninsula with the Gulf of Mexico on its west side and Tampa Bay on its east, and it is the most densely populated county in Florida. Close to a million people live in an area you can drive the length of in under an hour, which is why it does not feel like one place. It feels like twenty four of them, because that is roughly how many municipalities it contains.

The two big ones

St. Petersburg is the largest city, on the southern end, with a downtown waterfront that the city protected from private development long before that was fashionable. That decision is why the museums, the parks and the pier are where they are.

Clearwater sits north and west, and Clearwater Beach on the barrier island beyond it has been named among the best beaches in the country repeatedly.

And then everywhere else

Tarpon Springs, at the northern tip, has the highest concentration of Greek Americans of any city in the United States and a sponge industry that is still working. Dunedin has Honeymoon Island, a downtown people actually walk in, and the state's oldest craft brewery. Largo holds the county's botanical gardens and its history museum. Gulfport is an arts community on Boca Ciega Bay. Safety Harbor, Oldsmar, Seminole, Pinellas Park, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach and St. Pete Beach all have their own character and their own city halls.

The barrier islands

A chain of barrier islands runs the length of the Gulf side, connected by causeways and by Gulf Boulevard. That is where most of the beach is, and it is also why traffic on a sunny Saturday is what it is.

Getting around

The Pinellas Trail runs roughly fifty miles from Tarpon Springs to St. Petersburg on an old railroad corridor, which makes crossing the county by bicycle genuinely practical. The Sunshine Skyway carries I-275 south across the mouth of Tampa Bay toward Manatee County.

What this site is for

We cover Pinellas County: local news, the community calendar, a business directory and a forum. In a county this dense and this divided into small cities, a lot happens that never makes the regional news. That is the gap we are here to fill. If we have missed something in your city, tell us.

Cover photo: Robert Neff / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Source.