Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau
1555 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd. #800
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
(561) 471-3995
(561) 471-3990 (fax)
Population
67643
Time Zone
Eastern
Latitude/Longitude
26.67° /-80.08°
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With its office buildings and cultural institutions, West Palm Beach is the commercial and cultural center of Palm Beach County. From West Palm Beach it is only a drive across the Intracoastal Waterway to the beaches that have made the island of Palm Beach a major resort city.
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Head to downtown West Palm Beach for a wide range of theaters, galleries, and museums, each contributing to the city's cultural revitalization. The Norton Museum of Art offers outstanding works by America's 20th-century masters and the 19th century's French Impressionists in addition to an impressive collection of Chinese ceramics, jades, bronzes, and monumental Buddhist sculpture. Ballet, opera, and popular musical performers may be seen at the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts. The center has four different theatres for traveling performers and resident companies including the Palm Beach Opera and Ballet Florida.
In the 1880s, Standard Oil tycoon Henry Flagler began developing Palm Beach and its environs as a vacation paradise for the well-to-do, ensuring that subsequent generations would find plenty of golf courses, tennis courts, and polo grounds. The Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, once touted as the "Taj Mahal" of North America, offers a glimpse into the opulent lifestyles of the area's founder. Swank Palm Beach Polo and Country Club brings together the international polo elite. The matches are open to the public, and there is a good chance you will see a celebrity or two.
For a look at nature in civilized surroundings, Mounts Botanical Garden displays over 500 kinds of native tropical and subtropical plants as well as exotic species. Take in the Palm Beach Zoo at Dreher Park to stroll the boardwalk nature trail and see some 900 hundred animals living in natural settings. The South Florida Science Museum, found next to the zoo, has interactive science exhibits for children and adults, aquariums, planetarium shows, and an outdoor science trail. Lion Country Safari in neighboring Loxahatchee offers a simulated African wildlife preserve for drive-through adventuring. You can see more than 1,000 animals — elephants, buffalo, ostriches, giraffes, and more — living in habitats designed to mimic their indigenous lands. Then for a change of pace, take a canoe through the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. It protects over 200 square miles of Everglades as well as a 400-acre cypress swamp and is renowned as a bird-watcher's paradise.
For spectator sports, Roger Dean Stadium, in Jupiter, hosts a whole lot of baseball. It is home field for both the Palm Beach Cardinals and the Jupiter Hammerheads (both of the class-A Florida State League) and the spring training grounds for both the Florida Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals. Racing fans will find numerous kinds of tracks at Moroso Motorsports Park. For greyhound racing, a Palm Beach tradition since 1932, go to Palm Beach Kennel Club, where the greyhounds can reach 40 miles per hour.
Of course, for the sports-minded, this part of Florida offers some of the country's best water activities: fishing, swimming, and waterskiing are always popular, and for snorkeling and scuba diving enthusiasts, there are plenty of shipwrecks to explore and barrier reefs with calm ocean waters.
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