Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in St. Pete Beach, FL

St. Pete Beach was created on July 9, 1957, when four separate beach towns — Pass-a-Grille Beach, Don Ce-Sar Place, Belle Vista Beach, and St. Petersburg Beach — voted to merge into a single city, first called St. Petersburg Beach.

Residents voted in 1994 to shorten the city's name from St. Petersburg Beach to St. Pete Beach, to distinguish it from the much larger city of St. Petersburg a few miles to the east.

Pass-a-Grille, the community at the city's southern end, is the oldest beach resort community on Florida's Gulf coast, first homesteaded in 1886 by Union Army veteran Zephaniah Phillips.

The Pass-a-Grille Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, preserves one of the largest concentrations of historic buildings on Florida's Gulf coast.

St. Pete Beach's most famous landmark is the Don CeSar hotel, the rose-pink Mediterranean-Revival 'Pink Palace' built by developer Thomas Rowe and opened in January 1928 as a playground for America's wealthy during the Jazz Age.

The U.S. Army took over the Don CeSar in 1942 and used it as a hospital through World War II; the hotel later fell derelict, was saved from demolition by local citizens, and reopened as a resort in 1973.

St. Pete Beach had a population of 8,879 at the 2020 census, down from 9,346 in 2010, spread across about 5,000 households.

The city occupies the whole of Long Key, a barrier island with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and Boca Ciega Bay on the other, in places barely two hundred yards apart.

Downtown St. Pete Beach is centered on Corey Avenue, a walkable district of bars, restaurants, galleries, and the historic Beach Theatre.

The Gulf Beaches Historical Museum, housed in a 1917 former church in Pass-a-Grille, traces the history of Pinellas County's barrier islands back to the era of Ponce de Leon.