Daytona Beach
By Anna Lynn Sibal
Daytona Beach in Florida is touted to be The Most Famous Beach in the World. While this statement may sound presumptuous to some, the numbers can easily prove the veracity of this claim. In 2004 alone, there were eight million tourists, both from within and from outside the country, who flocked to Daytona Beach to frolic on its 23-mile stretch of glorious white sand.
But it is not just the beautiful sand and the coolness of the Atlantic Ocean that attracts visitors to Daytona Beach. Historically, Daytona Beach is deeply rooted in motorsports. This explains why the headquarters of NASCAR and the Grand American Road Racing Association are both located in Daytona Beach. It also explains why Daytona Beach is the only beach in the world where a person can drive a family car through the sand.
Daytona Beach is the Mecca of motorsports enthusiasts and people with a serious need for speed. These people start their pilgrimage to Daytona Beach on February of each year, just in time for the Daytona 500 to kick off the annual Speedweeks season of races held by the NASCAR at the Daytona International Speedway.
Other motorsports events held at Daytona Beach throughout the year are:
- The Rolex 24 Hour race early in the year.
- The Pepsi 400, held every Fourth of July.
- The Turkey Run during Thanksgiving weekend.
For motorcycling enthusiasts, there is more to Daytona Beach than just the beach and the car races. Every first week of March, some 500,000 visitors travel to Daytona Beach to attend the Daytona Beach Bike Week. The festivities for the Bike Week include not just motorcycle racing but also street parties and concerts. This event can last between ten days to a full two weeks. The Daytona Beach Bike Week shares the distinction of being the most popular motorcycle rally in the whole of the United States with the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
Daytona Beach does hold the distinction for being "The Most Famous Beach in the World." In the past decade, there was another reason why Daytona Beach is popular among the tourists, and that is because of the annual Spring Break. From early March to the first week of April, college students would travel to Daytona Beach in busloads to celebrate the coming of spring and the break from their studies. The beach front would be swarming with young people holding campfire parties on the sand, holding beach volleyball and surfing contests, and attending free concerts and other games. In its heyday, there were as many as 350,000 students coming from all over the world crowding Daytona Beach.
In the last decade, however, Daytona Beach started implementing laws on rowdiness at the beach in order to control the wild drinking sprees and the public nudity that is going on there. This turned students off, enough to make them spend their spring break elsewhere. Lately, however, the number of students returning to Daytona Beach is steadily going on the rise.
Daytona Beach is "The Most Famous Beach in the World." There is excitement to be found there.
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