Fort Walton Beach, often referred to by the initialism FWB, a city in southern Okaloosa County, Florida. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the population was 20,922, up from 19,507 in 2010. It is the principal city of the Fort Walton Beach−Crestview−Destin Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Fort Walton Beach is a year-round fishing and beach resort community. Its busiest grow old of the year is the summer, causing a boost to the local economy because of seasonal human migration.

Prehistoric concurrence of Fort Walton Beach is approved to the mound building “Fort Walton Culture” that flourished from approximately 1100–1550 CE. It is believed that this culture evolved out of the Weeden Island culture. Fort Walton also appeared in the future about due to entry with the major Mississippian centers to the north and west. It was the most rarefied in the north-west Florida region. The Fort Walton peoples put into practice mound building and intensive agriculture, made pottery in a variety of vessel shapes, and had hierarchical agreement patterns that reflected further Mississippian societies.

The first Europeans to set foot in what is now Okaloosa County and the Fort Walton Beach Place were members of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s party, who traveled by boat from what is now Panama City Beach, Florida in 1528 to Texas, “Then we set out to sea again, coasting towards the River of Palms. Every daylight our thirst and hunger increased because our supplies were giving out, as skillfully as the water supply, for the pouches we had made from the legs of our horses soon became rotten and useless. From mature to mature we would enter some inlet or cove that reached no question far inland, but we found them everything shallow and dangerous, and consequently we navigated through them for thirty days, meeting sometimes Indians who fished and were poor and dismal people”.