East Bay is a bay located in the far western Florida Panhandle. Unusually, East Bay is connected to open waters via

Pensacola Bay Pensacola Bay is a bay located in the northwestern part of Florida, United States, known as the Florida Panhandle. The bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, is located in Escambia County and Santa Rosa County, adjacent to the city of Pensacola ...

to its southwest. The bay is fed primarily by the

Blackwater River A blackwater river is a type of river with a slow-moving channel flowing through forested swamps or wetlands. As vegetation decays, tannins leach into the water, making a transparent, acidic water that is darkly stained, resembling black tea ...

and the

East Bay River The East Bay River (also called the East River and historically known as The River Jordan or the Chester River) in Florida is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1 ...

East Lagoon

The east side of East Bay is pinched into a wide river-like shape (often referred to as East Lagoon on historical maps, though the name is no longer commonly used) until eventually becoming an actual river at

. The Lagoon starts where the bay is met by Axelson Point and Miller Point.

History

European exploration of the bay likely occurred as early as Pensacola's establishment in the early 16th century. The bay has been included in most major maps of the bay system and harbor, dating back to that era. Between its first mapping and the present day, the bay has been listed under several different names, primarily Oyster Cove, Galvez Bay, and East Bay. During

Hurricane Ivan Hurricane Ivan was a large, long-lived, Cape Verde hurricane that caused widespread damage in the Caribbean and United States. The cyclone was the ninth named storm, the sixth hurricane and the fourth major hurricane of the active 2004 Atlant ...

's landfall in September 2004, the storm surge from the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

came into East Bay, flooding the shoreline of the bay.

References

Bays of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico Bodies of water of Santa Rosa County, Florida Navarre, Florida {{SantaRosaCountyFL-geo-stub