Ponte Vedra Beach is an unincorporatedseaside community in St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Located eighteen miles (29 km) southeast of downtown Jacksonville and 26 miles (42 km) north of St. Augustine, it is part of the Jacksonville Beaches area. The area is known for its resorts including the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club, the Lodge and Club, and the Marriott at Sawgrass. It also lies within St. Johns County, which is the wealthiest county in Florida. Ponte Vedra Beach is an upper-income tourist resort area best known for its association with golf and is home to the PGA Tour and The Players.
What is now north Florida was visited several times by European explorers in the 16th century, but there is little evidence for them specifically coming to Ponte Vedra Beach. It may have been sighted by Juan Ponce de León during his voyage to Florida in 1513, but as his precise landfall is unknown, this claim can be made by many communities on the east coast of Florida. The area remained sparsely populated through the late 19th century, even as other seaside communities began to develop to the north. In 1914 minerals were discovered, and a community known as Mineral City grew up around the mining operations. Titanium (ilmenite) extraction was significant, as well as that of zircon and rutile. These minerals were recovered from beach sands by the Buckman and Pritchard Mining Company. The National Lead Company bought Buckman and Pritchard in 1921 and discontinued mining the minerals as demand dropped after World War I. In 1929 it began to develop the area to be similar to The Cloister in Sea Island, Georgia. Colonel Joseph C. Stehlin, who had been with the company in St. Louis, arrived on January 1, 1929 to manage the development. The company wanted a more impressive name than Mineral City for its resort, so Colonel Stehlin and his wife, Elizabeth (née Morton), went to the library in St. Augustine to research various possibilities for a new name. Since Florida had been under Spanish rule at one time, they looked on an old map and found the name Pontevedra on the Atlantic coast of Spain at approximately the same latitude as Mineral City. The Galician name of the town was derived from a Roman bridge (“ponte vetera” or “old bridge”) that spanned the nearby Lérez River centuries earlier. Colonel Stehlin submitted the name to the National Lead board for approval and Mineral City became Ponte Vedra.
In 1972, real estate developers broke ground on the 1,100-acre (4.5 km²) Sawgrass development. In the mid 1970s, Deane Beman, the Commissioner of the PGA golf tour, was looking for a permanent home for the Tournament Players Championship. Many places in northern Florida were being considered. In an attempt to bring positive attention to the area, developer Paul Fletcher offered a 400-acre (1.6 km²) tract of land to Beman for $1. Beman could not refuse this one dollar deal for the future home of The Players Championship and the headquarters of the PGA Tour. The Sawgrass Stadium Course has been the permanent home of The Players Championship since 1982.
