This massive concert transformed Emerald Coast tourism forever!

On April 21, 1984, tourism on the Emerald Coast changed forever. 

On that sunny spring afternoon, the band Heart (you know, Barracuda) played a free concert to somewhere between 25,000 and 35,000 people – roughly twice the number of people who lived in Fort Walton Beach at the time. 

Not only was it a first-class act in town, but the Budweiser promotion promised (and delivered on) free beer for the concert attendees, as well as t-shirts that said, “Budweiser University” on them. 

It was spring break season for the universities of Alabama, Auburn, LSU, and Ole Miss that week – and the universities’ co-eds showed up en masse to celebrate passing their mid-terms (or not) over Easter.  

Photos and newspaper clippings of the event can still be found drifting around the internet – mostly on Facebook groups that celebrate the past of the Emerald Coast. Still more people of a certain age post about their memories of the event. Others talk about the nasty sunburns they received and had to nurse for several days afterwards. 

One group that would have rather it never happened was the Okaloosa County Commissioners. For them, the free concert and the way it gummed up the transportation infrastructure made it clear almost instantly that the area was not ready for people to ‘discover’ it yet. The five-person executive body says the line of parked cars from Wayside Park on Okaloosa Island, near what was called The Ramada (and is now called The Island), stretched all the way into downtown Fort Walton Beach and perhaps farther afield. 

The backup on 98 from people leaving the concert afterward reportedly lasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 hours, eastbound and westbound. 

Local tourism entrepreneur Tripp Tolbert remembered that it was the day Okaloosa County had to decide whether to be a Spring Break destination for families or college students. “As Spring Break got worse and worse over the years, as the kids were doing more and more vandalism to the hotels and just basically being unruly,” he remembered the commissioners, “started trying to defer the [college] Spring Breakers from coming here and becoming a more family-friendly environment, because as the media got ahold of it and whatnot, the way kids behaved, it was just not a good mix with families and Spring Breakers at the same time.”

Some of the facts on the ground can be attributed to policy changes made after the concert. Disallowing parking on the side of the road on 98 was now more heavily enforced. Tourism tax dollars are now used to ensure the safety of beachgoers and the tranquility of the public at large.

Still, issues arise from College and High School Spring Breaks: in one week of 2026, Okaloosa County Sheriff’s deputies alone made almost 250 arrests for crimes connected to Spring Break.