Ozona Florida, an “Old Florida” Waterfront & Golf-cart Friendly Community

Ozona FL offers “Old Florida” small-town living with the added benefit of being part of a larger, surrounding community with fabulous amenities.  Sometimes it seems that this eclectic waterfront community likes to keep itself a secret from the mainstreamers of Palm Harbor.  One thing’s for sure, having an Ozona address unofficially puts you into the insiders club.  

Part of unincorporated Palm Harbor, Ozona is not quite a city, yet there’s certainly more to love here than your average neighborhood.  

Hugging the Gulf of Mexico, Ozona sits just south of Tarpon Springs and Crystal Beach and north of Dunedin -and stops to the East at Alternate 19 (aka Palm Harbor Blvd.).   Boaters relish in it’s surrounding waters leading to St. Joseph Sound and the open Gulf of Mexico.  There’s Sutherland Bayou to the north and Smith Bayou to the south, and that’s Lungreen Cove just north of the dash after Ozona in the picture above.   While Ozona is a small community of about 1100 people, it supports 5 marinas for those that don’t have the luxury of a dock in the backyard. 

Ozona is a golf-cart friendly community where you’ll find parents cruising their kids to school in style.  There’s also the annual Christmas golf-cart parade, with the carts fully decorated to the nines.  If actually playing golf is what you’re after, Innisbrook’s four championship courses are laid out on over 600 acres about a mile up the road in Palm Harbor.

If you were to search for Ozona homes, you’d find them from the low $200′s for a funky cottage up to the $2M+ range.  The cute and somewhat dusty downtown “main” street (Orange Street) brings you back to yesteryear, and here you’ll find casual restaurants including Molly Goodhead’s and The Ozona Pig.  There’s also the Ozona Blue Grilling Company just down the road, where you can have lunch and a cocktail while taking a dip in the waterside pool!  For your sweet tooth, there’s Chocolate Studios, featuring exotic homemade chocolate creations.   If you prefer to prepare your own fine dining experience, then a trip to the Ozona Seafood Company is a must – they have incredible fresh fish, meat and all sorts of gourmet goodies.

If you’ve got young ones, they’re eligible to go to Ozona Elementary- the school in Palm Harbor that elicits tons of rave reviews from parents year after year, and is brilliantly managed by it’s Principal, Kerry Apuzzo.  Better yet, the local high school is Palm Harbor University High, ranked in 2008 by Newsweek at #208 of the top 1400 public high schools in the nation (of which there are over 27,000!)  

Even if you’re not a big fan of the water, yet you enjoy an “Old Florida” town feel, you’ll fall in love with the charm and sense of community that Ozona offers.  It is unsurpassed in North Pinellas County – except perhaps by the other seaside community to the north which is Crystal Beach. 

Then again, it depends who you ask.

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