Dune Allen Homes for Sale

Living in Dune Allen

Dune Allen Beach is the first neighborhood on 30A heading east from US Highway 98, with Gulf Place about three trail miles ahead and Blue Mountain Beach beyond that. Five of the county's fifteen named coastal dune lakes sit inside this one neighborhood: Allen, Campbell, Morris, Oyster and Stallworth. Stallworth comes into view first heading east from the trailhead, Allen Lake runs up against the trail near Stinky's Fish Camp, and Oyster Lake, about 23 acres in the federal hydrography record, opens to the Gulf through an outfall across the sand when rainfall pushes it high enough. The neighborhood has two regional beach accesses of its own, the Dune Allen Regional Beach Access, where the trail crosses to the Gulf side at about mile 2, and Fort Panic Regional Beach Access. Detached beach cottages and later houses line the streets between 30A and the water, without a platted town center, though not without commerce: Stinky's Fish Camp sits on Allen Lake, Stinky's Bait Shack and 3 Sons BBQ trade nearby, and small markets sit along the highway. The Timpoochee Trail starts here rather than passing through. Mile 0 sits on the west side of 30A where it separates from US Highway 98, at the Topsail Hill Preserve State Park crosswalk, and the paved path runs east from that point to Inlet Beach under Walton County Parks and Recreation, a distance the county publishes as 19 miles and an independent trail guide measures at 18.4. What governs building here is public and specific rather than absent. With that many lakes inside one neighborhood, Walton County's resource protection standards apply a 300-foot Coastal Dune Lake Protection Zone measured landward from each lake's ordinary or mean high water line. Inside it the county holds construction and vegetation clearing 100 feet back from the shoreline, preserves at least 60 percent of that portion of a parcel as pervious surface, leaves a 50-foot undisturbed strip on both sides of each lake's natural outlet, bars seawalls, bulkheads, revetments and rip-rap, and requires a land clearing permit before any of it is touched. The code writes one exception to the 100-foot shoreline setback and it is narrow. It reaches only a lot of record that was created before November 7, 1996 and is no more than 200 feet deep, and where both are true the setback drops to 25 feet or a quarter of the lot depth, whichever is greater. Age by itself does not qualify a parcel for it. The 300-foot zone reaches that far back from the water on parcels that are otherwise ordinary, which is why shoreline frontage and buildable ground are two separate questions at Dune Allen.

• Five coastal dune lakes
• Dune Allen and Fort Panic regional beach accesses
• Mile 0 of the Timpoochee Trail
• Topsail Hill Preserve State Park at the west end