Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Ocean Ridge, FL

Ocean Ridge is a small incorporated town on a barrier island in Palm Beach County, stretched along State Road A1A between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Before European settlement, the Ocean Ridge barrier island was home to the Jaega people, whose shell mounds and middens near Boynton Inlet were largely destroyed during the 1920s Florida land boom, when the shell and sand were dug up to grade land for development.

Ocean Ridge exists because of a tax revolt: in 1931, unhappy with the Town of Boynton's property taxes and rising debt, just twelve beachfront homes broke away and incorporated themselves as the Town of Boynton Beach.

Ocean Ridge got its name from a contest - after mail for the new town kept being sent by mistake to Daytona Beach, Marion White Bird, the mayor's daughter, suggested 'Ocean Ridge' in 1937, and the name was made official in 1939.

In 1925 the flamboyant architect Addison Mizner drew up plans for a 2,000-room hotel on what is now Ocean Ridge; the scheme collapsed, and his 'Mizner Mile' property was sold in 1930 to Chicago Tribune publisher Colonel Robert R. McCormick in what was then the largest real estate transaction in Palm Beach County history.

Ocean Ridge had a population of 1,830 at the 2020 census - a dramatic rise from just 37 residents recorded in 1940.

Ocean Ridge has 972 households but 1,557 housing units, and 37.6% of its homes stood vacant at the 2020 census because so many are seasonal second homes; the town's population swells to roughly 2,700 in the winter season.

Ocean Ridge is one of the oldest communities in Florida by age profile: its median age was 63.4 years in 2020, and 45.7% of its residents were 65 or older.

Ocean Ridge has a tropical savanna climate and sits in the only part of the contiguous United States classified as truly tropical.

Town ordinances adopted in the 1960s phase out commercial activity, so Ocean Ridge has no commercial zoning on its oceanfront at all - no hotels, beach bars or shops, just houses and dunes.