7 Towns Perfect for Retirement in Gulf Coast

Seven small Gulf Coast towns deliver retirement on actual fixed-budget terms. None carries the price tag of a Florida resort capital. Each runs on a working downtown, a beach footprint, or a state-park and wildlife-refuge system at the city limits. Median home prices on the list range from $260,000 in Carrabelle to about $470,000 in Fairhope. The states that hold them mostly tax retirement income lightly or not at all.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida

Fort Walton Beach sits in Okaloosa County between Pensacola and Panama City on Florida's Emerald Coast. The Okaloosa Island Pier on the Gulf side extends 1,261 feet over the water and is the longest fishing pier in the Florida Panhandle. Day fishing passes run about $9 and do not require a state license. The Emerald Coast Convention Center on Pryor Avenue runs the calendar of seasonal events and gives the town's central walking district a year-round anchor.

The Indian Temple Mound Museum on Miracle Strip Parkway covers a National Historic Landmark mound built between roughly 800 and 1500 CE by the Fort Walton culture, the dominant pre-Columbian people of the central Gulf region. The Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin Air Force Base just north of town runs a free outdoor display of about 30 historic aircraft, including an SR-71 Blackbird. The median home price in Fort Walton Beach is about $350,000.

Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Ocean Springs sits across the Biloxi Bay Bridge from Biloxi in Jackson County, Mississippi. Coastal Living magazine ranked the town among the top ten Happiest Seaside Towns in the United States in 2015, and the local arts economy has continued to grow since. The Walter Anderson Museum of Art on Washington Avenue holds about 1,000 works by the visionary regional artist Walter Anderson, including the murals Anderson painted on the walls of the Ocean Springs Community Center in 1951.

The Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge ten minutes north of town covers 19,756 acres of wet pine savanna preserved specifically to protect the Mississippi sandhill crane, a non-migratory population of about 130 birds. The refuge is the only protected habitat for this subspecies anywhere in the world. The median home price in Ocean Springs is about $300,000.

Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

Bay St. Louis sits at the western end of the Mississippi coast in Hancock County, about 50 miles from New Orleans. The Old Town historic district covers a six-block grid of 19th-century cottages, beach houses, and commercial buildings on the National Register, with most rebuilt or fully restored after Hurricane Katrina destroyed roughly two-thirds of the structures in August 2005. Beach Boulevard runs the waterfront with public beach access stretching the length of town.

The 100 Men D.B.A. Hall on Union Street is an 1894 African-American benevolent-society building that has operated as a live music venue since 1922 and now runs a year-round calendar of blues, jazz, zydeco, and traditional New Orleans brass band shows. The Hancock County Historical Society in the 1896 Lobrano House on Cue Street runs walking tours of Old Town that cover the architectural recovery from Katrina. The median home price in Bay St. Louis is about $295,000.

Fairhope, Alabama

Fairhope sits on the east shore of Mobile Bay in Baldwin County, Alabama. The town was founded in 1894 as a single-tax utopian community based on the economic theories of Henry George and still operates the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation that owns much of the original land grant. The quarter-mile Fairhope Pier extends into the bay from the foot of Magnolia Avenue and is the gathering point for the local sunset crowd, jubilee watchers, and bay fishermen.

The Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve six miles south of town covers 6,500 acres of estuary, marsh, and pine flatwood with an interpretive center, two boardwalks through the wetlands, and a small boat launch. The downtown grid above the pier holds about 100 independent shops, restaurants, and galleries along Section Street and Fairhope Avenue. The Fairhope Library Foundation runs the annual Fairhope Film Festival the second weekend of November. The median home price in Fairhope is about $470,000, the highest on this list.

Rockport, Texas

Rockport sits in Aransas County on Aransas Bay about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi on the central Texas coast. Rockport Beach was the first beach in Texas to earn Blue Wave certification from the Clean Beaches Council, an environmental standard for water quality and public access. The mile-long beach runs along a sheltered cove on Aransas Bay with calm shallow water and lifeguard service in season.

The Fulton Mansion State Historic Site on Henry Street is the 1877 Second Empire-style home of cattle baron George W. Fulton, with original gas lighting, central heating, and indoor plumbing that were rare in private homes of the period. The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge ten miles north of town is the only wintering site in the world for the endangered whooping crane, with about 540 birds in the wintering population as of recent counts. The median home price in Rockport is about $330,000.

Mandeville, Louisiana

Mandeville sits on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, connected to New Orleans by the 24-mile Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest continuous bridge over water in the world. The Mandeville lakefront runs about three miles of sea wall with public access, fishing piers, and the trailhead for the Tammany Trace. The Trace is a 31-mile paved rail-trail that runs north to Slidell, Abita Springs, and Covington along the right-of-way of the former Illinois Central Railroad.

Fontainebleau State Park six miles east of town covers 2,800 acres of pine and oak forest along the lakeshore, with the ruins of an 1829 sugar mill that gave the park its name. Old Mandeville along Lake Drive holds a historic district of 19th-century cottages and live-oak streets with a working dining scene along Girod Street that includes Rip's on the Lake and the Old Rail Brewing Company. The median home price in Mandeville is about $410,000.

Carrabelle, Florida

Carrabelle sits on the Forgotten Coast of the Florida Panhandle in Franklin County at the mouth of the Carrabelle River. The town has about 2,800 residents and runs on a shrimp-and-oyster fleet, sport fishing, and the surrounding state and national forest acreage. Tate's Hell State Forest covers 202,000 acres directly north of town with 35 designated camping sites, kayak access along the Crooked and Ochlockonee rivers, and the unusual cypress-swamp ecology that gave the forest its name in local folklore.

The Crooked River Lighthouse on US-98 west of town is an 1895 cast-iron tower that operates today as a museum with a 138-step climb to the lantern room for views over St. George Sound. The Carrabelle History Museum on Marine Street covers the World War II Camp Gordon Johnston, an Army training camp that prepared roughly 250,000 troops for amphibious landings on the beaches west of town between 1942 and 1946. The median home price in Carrabelle is about $260,000, the most affordable on this list.

Picking The Right Town

The seven split into rough price tiers. Carrabelle, Bay St. Louis, Ocean Springs, and Fort Walton Beach run the affordable end at median home prices under $360,000. Rockport and Mandeville sit in the middle at around $330,000 to $410,000. Fairhope runs higher at about $470,000. Each town runs on a working waterfront and a state-park or wildlife-refuge system at the edge of the city limits. The coastal pace and the regional tax treatment make any of these towns a workable option for retirement budgets that need to last.