US Map / Cities / Port St. Lucie

Port St. Lucie Map

Port St. Lucie was drawn on paper as a grid of lots and drainage canals before anyone lived there, and it has since filled in to become one of Florida's largest cities.

Where is Port St. Lucie?

Port St. Lucie is on the Atlantic side of Florida, on what is locally called the Treasure Coast, about 45 miles north of West Palm Beach and roughly 110 miles north of Miami. Orlando lies some 120 miles northwest across the interior, and Tampa about 150 miles west. Interstate 95 and Florida's Turnpike both run through the city, a few miles inland of the ocean.

Port St. Lucie at a glance

Port St. Lucie in Florida

The city is in St. Lucie County, whose seat is Fort Pierce to the north — the Florida county map shows the narrow east-coast counties stacked one above another along the lagoon. Port St. Lucie has been among the fastest-growing large cities in the United States for years, and only Jacksonville and Miami now hold more people on Florida's Atlantic side. The Florida state page shows how the state's growth has pushed inland from both coasts.

The St. Lucie River and a subdivision the size of a county

The North Fork of the St. Lucie River winds through the city and empties into the Indian River Lagoon, the long shallow estuary that runs behind the barrier islands for most of Florida's central east coast; Hutchinson Island shields the coast here, and the St. Lucie Inlet opens to the Atlantic to the south. The city's shape comes from a 1960s land development that platted tens of thousands of quarter-acre lots on flat pine flatwoods and pasture, cutting hundreds of miles of drainage canals to make the ground dry enough to build on. Streets and canals were in place decades before the houses were, which is why the grid runs so uniformly and the built area filled in from several directions at once. Cape Coral, on the Gulf side, was created the same way.

Cities near Port St. Lucie

Elsewhere in Florida are Miami, Hialeah, Orlando, Tampa and Cape Coral. For where the state's cities sit nationally, open the US map with cities.