O'Steen Public Beach Access — Attraction in Destin

First time coming to Destin ever. I was staying in Pensacola and drove here. I looked to Google Maps for a public beach, and this was the only one that came up for "public beach". Apparently there are others. Getting to the beach from the street felt dangerous, I had to walk down a narrow dark walkway right next to a person's private house. Glad I had my pepper gel, and the dunes were so tall I was a little nervous about people hiding around them. Anyway, the beach was quiet, but the water was very shallow - you have to sit in the water - and the wake from boats made the waves too rocky. As a tourist, I would like more advertisements for the tourist beaches. Not sure how I found a local...

It’s a beautiful beach with crystal clear water and barely any waves making perfect if you have little kids. A few down side, 1) It’s a bit of a far walk if you have kids 2) Emerald Grande sets up chairs for their guest and take a lot of space acting like the own the beach, which is public beach 3) snorkel companies take their boats with 20+ people there and crowd the area. At one point and boat backed up right where I was swimming with my kids and we had to move or we could have gotten hit, mind you there was plenty of space on the other side. It’s a beautiful beach just a little overcrowded. Pictures are from when we got there right at 8am. It started getting crowded at 8:45-9am....

This place is beautiful and I was really shocked that parking was free... BUT Emerald Coast Resort obviously has taken over this spot. We went here and there were TONS of empty seats (I'd never been there so I wasn't familiar with the fact that you can't use them). They closed the beach within 20 minutes of being there and a guy started packing up the chairs, proceeded to tell me there was no room on the boat for me (which I didn't use to get there) and that I couldn't use the chairs in the future. We will be looking for a different location to see the beach for the remainder...