Flagler County, FL FAQs
Is Flagler County Florida A Good Place to Live?
Flagler County, FL
Flagler County is located on the northeast coast of Florida. It was founded in 1917, drawing its acreage from parts of Saint Johns and Volusia Counties which are now respectively adjacent north and south of Flagler. Bordered west by Putnam County, Flagler has a total 571 square miles of territory, 485 square miles of which are land and the rest water.
This county was named after Henry Morrison Flagler, the American industrialist who founded Standard Oil and the Florida East Coast Railway as well as one of the prime movers in the development of the U.S. Atlantic Coast. Flagler County has three cites: its county seat Bunnell, its largest, Palm Coast, and Flagler Beach. Also within Flagler’s fold are 13 unincorporated communities.
Intermodal Transportation
The Intracoastal Waterway slices into the eastern portion of Flagler County. It provides a sheltered sea lane for recreational boating as well as freight shipping stretching from Miami to Canada’s St. Lawrence Seaway. Rail freight in the county is run via the Florida East Coast Railway.
The Flagler County Airport services are limited to business and student aviation. Newly renovated, this executive airport provides two runways—one 5,500 feet long and the other at 5,000 feet— plus a 3,000-foot water runway. Nearby commercial airline terminals available to the county’s residents include the international airports of Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Orlando Sanford and Orlando.
Flagler is truly a desirable destination not only for business locators and would-be residents but also for tourists and vacationers. The county’s Atlantic Ocean beachfront stretches for 18 miles of pristine coastline. It hosts more than 40 parks and preserves that provide extensive, interconnected trails for hiking, biking and paddling.
Nature at Its Best
Visits to the Palm Coast and the Flagler Beaches showcase the rare experience of having access to uncrowded shorelines and 125 miles of mangrove-canopied kayak trails. Traversing these waterways, visitors will find a robust ecosystem and a thriving habitat for wading birds and charming marine life like sea turtles, dolphins and even right whales.
Flagler’s close affinity with nature is likewise manifest in the string of citations for the City of Palm Coast as Tree City USA in recognition of its urban forestry program. Notably, the city has won this award from National Arbor Day Foundation for the 13th straight year in 2018.
Palm Coast too is an epitome of the vigorous economic recovery after the Great Recession with the uptick in its building activity, residential and commercial construction permitting, and building permit revenues. The most visible of the uptrend is the redevelopment of the city’s Island Walk Shopping Center anchored on a Publix Supermarket. New Palm Coast businesses are also setting up shop along the State Route 100 corridor.
Given all these positive vibes going for Palm Coast, it thus comes as no surprise that the city, along with Flagler County, has experienced double-digit population growth from 2010 to 2017. Gains in number of residents for both the city and the county were both estimated at a healthy 15 percent clip putting their residents’ count to 86,516 and to 108,310, respectively