America's Third Most Popular Beach: 14 Million Visited the Sands of Miami Beach Last Year

It's the summer months which means two things: Americans are slathering on the SPF, and websites are hungry for listicle traffic. So, obviously, The Daily Beast has decided to calculate America's favorite beach. Miami Beach came in third, but wasn't even the highest ranking Florida beach on the list...

By Kyle Munzenrieder

August 1, 2011

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It's the summer months which means two things: Americans are slathering on the SPF, and websites are hungry for listicle traffic. So, obviously, The Daily Beast has decided to calculate America's favorite beach. Miami Beach came in third, but wasn't even the highest ranking Florida beach on the list.

The Beast explains its method:

To compile the list we turned to the United States Lifesaving Association, which maintains statistics for more than 200 beaches as reported by local lifeguard agencies. United States Lifesaving Association We considered the 2010 total beach attendance figures from the USLA as well as total resident population of each beach town according to the Census to determine which beach had the most visitors overall, as well as those that lure the most guests compared to residents. Total visitors and a metric of visitors divided by residents were weighted equally to determine the overall rank.

Miami Beach had 14,214,282 in 2010. Despite citing the beach as belonging to "Miami, Fla" and not Miami Beach, they do use Miami Beach's population statistics. That's good for a ranking of third.

Jacksonville Beach however came in at number one, edging us out not only as America's favorite beach, but Florida. They had an attendance of 9,000,000 in 2010 with a population of only 22,051.

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