Florida

Florida is the third most populous state, with about 22.6 million residents across 65,758 square miles, nearly 20% of it water. Tallahassee is the capital, though Miami, Jacksonville, and Tampa are all much larger cities — Jacksonville is actually the largest city by land area in the entire contiguous United States, at 874 square miles.

Florida is "The Sunshine State," admitted to the Union on March 3, 1845 as the 27th state. It's a genuine peninsula surrounded by water on three sides, with no point more than 60 miles from a saltwater body, and its highest point, Britton Hill at just 345 feet, is the lowest state high point in the country. Florida is also the most visited state in the country, drawing more than 130 million tourists a year, and one of the most important presidential swing states, carrying 30 electoral votes.

Florida's economy runs heavily on tourism — Walt Disney World alone employs about 77,000 people, the largest single-site employer in the country — alongside healthcare driven by one of the oldest populations in the nation, and a fast-growing finance sector in Miami that has drawn hedge funds and private equity firms relocating from New York and Chicago. Florida has no state income tax, a policy that, combined with its climate, has made it a magnet for retirees and high-income earners.

Florida is the flattest state in the continental US, its highest point sitting at just 345 feet, but "flat" doesn't mean featureless — the state's real natural wonder is water rather than elevation. Florida has more natural springs than anywhere else in the country, over 700 of them, discharging billions of gallons of crystal-clear, 68-degree water year-round from the Floridan Aquifer. Ichetucknee Springs feeds a six-mile river beloved for summer tubing, and Wakulla Springs, one of the deepest and largest freshwater springs in the world, sheltered manatees and served as the filming location for the original Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954.

The Everglades

The Everglades cover roughly 1.5 million acres of South Florida, the largest subtropical wilderness in the country and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — a slow-moving sheet of freshwater flowing south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, supporting alligators, Florida panthers, and hundreds of bird species. Big Cypress National Preserve, at 729,000 acres, offers wet-and-dry-season hiking through cypress domes and prairies, and Fakahatchee Strand Preserve, nicknamed the "Amazon of North America," holds the largest concentration of native royal palms and wild orchids anywhere in the country.

The Keys and the Coast

The Florida Keys extend 125 miles southwest from the peninsula's tip, connected by the 113-mile Overseas Highway across 42 bridges to Key West, the southernmost city in the contiguous US and, at 24.5°N latitude, actually south of Cairo, Egypt. Dry Tortugas National Park, 70 miles further west and accessible only by ferry or seaplane, centers on Fort Jefferson, a massive 19th-century hexagonal fort on a coral island. Along the Panhandle, the beaches around Destin and Pensacola are made of brilliantly white quartz sand — fine enough to squeak underfoot — protected in large part by the Gulf Islands National Seashore.

Florida's cities form one of the more complex urban geographies in the country — several large, distinct metro areas that function almost independently of one another.

Miami and Jacksonville

Miami, though modest in city-limit population, punches far above its size as the economic and cultural capital of South Florida and the broader Caribbean Basin — a genuinely bilingual city where Spanish and English hold equal standing, with Brickell functioning as the leading financial district in Latin America and PortMiami handling more cruise passengers than any port in the world. Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida by both population and land area, consolidated with Duval County in 1968 and carries a significant Navy presence alongside a growing financial-services sector.

Tampa and Orlando

Tampa Bay anchors Florida's Gulf Coast, home to a strong port, a growing cybersecurity sector, and Ybor City, a historic Cuban cigar-manufacturing district turned entertainment hub. Orlando, the global capital of theme-park tourism, has diversified its economy considerably beyond hospitality through a simulation and modeling industry tied to nearby military and space interests, plus a growing medical corridor at Lake Nona.

Tallahassee and the Smaller Cities

Tallahassee, the capital and a genuine college town anchored by Florida State University and Florida A&M, carries a character distinctly different from coastal Florida — more wooded, more Southern, and shaped by a significant African American cultural heritage. St. Petersburg, Tampa's smaller neighbor across the bay, has built a vibrant arts identity around the Salvador Dalí Museum, the largest collection of Dalí's work outside Spain.

The Economy

Tourism remains Florida's economic foundation, generating more than $100 billion in annual impact and anchored by Walt Disney World, Universal, and the cruise industry at PortMiami and Port Canaveral. Aerospace and defense cluster around the Space Coast in Brevard County, where NASA's Kennedy Space Center and SpaceX's Cape Canaveral launch facilities employ tens of thousands, making Florida the primary launch site for US space missions. Miami's finance sector has grown dramatically in the 2020s — Ken Griffin's move of Citadel from Chicago to Miami in 2022 was a high-profile example of a broader relocation trend — and agriculture remains genuinely significant too, with Florida ranking second nationally in agricultural revenue and Immokalee earning the nickname "tomato capital of the world."

The University of Florida in Gainesville, the state's flagship and a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, enrolls about 55,000 students and is consistently ranked in the top 10 among public universities nationally. Florida State University in Tallahassee carries particular strength in business, law, and the performing arts, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando is the largest university in the entire country by enrollment, with roughly 70,000 students and a distinctive partnership with the region's simulation and training industry. The University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is a world leader in oceanography, a logical specialty given Miami's location.

At the high school level, Pine View School in Sarasota County, a magnet for gifted students, has been ranked the top high school in Florida and among the best nationally, and Suncoast Community High School in Palm Beach County is a STEM magnet consistently ranked among the top 10 in the country by US News & World Report. The School for Advanced Studies in Miami-Dade lets students earn both a high school diploma and an associate degree simultaneously, a dual-enrollment model that has since been replicated statewide.

Florida's visitor identity runs from world-famous theme parks to some of the oldest European settlements in the country.

St. Augustine and Historic Towns

St. Augustine, founded in 1565, is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States — 42 years older than Jamestown — and its Castillo de San Marcos, built from coquina shell rock, is the oldest masonry fort in the country. Pensacola, founded even earlier in 1559, has flown five different flags over its history, and Tarpon Springs holds the largest Greek community in the US, its sponge docks still working since Greek immigrants arrived in the 1880s to harvest sea sponges.

Theme Parks and Family Weekends

The greater Orlando area holds more theme-park capacity than anywhere else on Earth — Walt Disney World alone covers 27,000 acres across four parks, and Universal Orlando's Wizarding World of Harry Potter is consistently rated among the best theme-park experiences globally. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, the most educational major attraction in the state, lets visitors time their trip around an actual SpaceX or NASA launch, and the Everglades, easily accessible from Miami, offer airboat tours and the Anhinga Trail's close-up wildlife viewing with alligators essentially guaranteed year-round.

Road Trips

The Keys Highway, 113 miles from Florida City to Key West across 42 bridges including the iconic Seven Mile Bridge, is the classic Florida road trip, worth two full days rather than the three-hour non-stop drive. The Florida Panhandle Scenic Byway threads through Destin and Panama City Beach's white-sand Emerald Coast to the historic oyster town of Apalachicola, and the Nature Coast Loop north of Tampa reveals an "old Florida" of manatees and small towns that have changed little since the 1950s.