Okaloosa County Records

How the 'World's Luckiest Fishing Village' was born

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article first appeared in the Northwest Florida Daily News in 1992.

A piece of Destin's heritage is repeated every day.

At points throughout Destin an angler will cast a line into the water to catch a fish. It's a simple act that brought Destin's first European settlers to the safe harbor at East Pass 150 years ago and has kept people coming ever since.

Before the first Spanish sailors found Destin in the 1500s, Indians flourished along Destin's Choctawhatchee Bay shoreline. It's common to find pieces of broken Indian pottery along the bay. In fact, some residents believe there once was an Indian burial mound near East Pass that rivals the Fort Walton Beach mound.

Historians say the first Europeans to explore Destin were Spanish soldiers and seamen.

In September 1528, Panfilo de Narvaez came ashore at East Pass where he was greeted by Indians, Leonard Hutchinson wrote in “History of the Playground Area.” Narvaez had been exploring the Gulf Coast of Florida. By the time he reached East Pass his force had been nearly destroyed by Indian attacks near Apalachicola and the Spaniards were trying to reach the safety of Mexico.

But by the end of the first day with the East Pass Indians, relations had soured and a battle forced the Spaniards to flee back to the safety of their three barges in the Gulf, Hutchinson wrote, quoting Spanish naval archives.

Spanish naval Capt. Diego Maldonao is thought to have visited East Pass in 1539 in search of a good harbor for Spanish treasure ships. And in June 1693 Don Francisco Milan Tapia, while sailing along the Gulf shore, described an opening in the line of dunes wide and deep enough to sail his ship into.

But it wasn't Spaniards that settled Destin. It was a New England fisherman who became the community's founder and namesake.

Leonard Destin was born on Aug. 31, 1813 to George Destin and Fanny Rogers. In the 1830s family members sailed south from Connecticut for new fishing grounds. Off Cape Canaveral, the elder Destin and one of Leonard's brothers were drowned during a storm.

Leonard Destin continued around Florida finally settling at the inlet called East Pass. Destin married South Carolina-native Martha McCullum, who was 22 years his junior, and they set about raising a family.

In the meantime most what was now called Destin became designated by the federal government in 1842 as the Moreno Point Military Reservation.

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