Where can you find America’s best beaches?
Try Florida, which placed three in Dr. Stephen Leatherman’s top 10 beaches.
“Dr. Beach” also named Fort De Soto Parks North Beach, located near St. Petersburg, the No. 1 beach for 2005.
The top five beaches in order were the Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina; Hanalei Bay on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai; Caladesi Island State Park near Clearwater, Florida, and Fleming Beach, on the island of Maui in Hawaii.
The other top ten included:
Coast Guard Beach in Cape Cod, Mass; Coronado Beach, San Diego; Cape Florida State Park on Key Biscayne near Miami; Main Beach at East Hampton in New York, and Hamoa Beach, in Maui.
Dr Leatherman said the Fort De Soto beach was a “natural jewel on the finger of a sun-drenched city.”
“It’s a long, wide sugar sand beach with great shelling and thriving natural dunes, on the Gulf of Mexico,” he added.
Dr Leatherman says he chooses the top beaches each year under 50 criteria that include facilities, management, scientific and ecological factors.
Report by David Wilkening
