Panama City is a city and the county seat of Bay County, Florida, United States. Located along U.S. Route 98, it is the largest city between Tallahassee and Pensacola. It is the more populated of two principal cities of the Panama City-Lynn Haven, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 36,484. When Panama City was incorporated in 1909, its original city limits were 15th Street (Hwy 98) on the north, Balboa Avenue on the west and Bay Avenue on the east.

The development of the area of Northwest Florida that was first incorporated as Panama City started as an unincorporated settlement first called "Floriopolis," which became "Park Resort" and then "Harrison" [5] a name still assigned to Panama City's major downtown thoroughfare. According to the Panama City Public Library's A History of Panama City, a developer named George Mortimer West hoped to spur real estate development in Bay County during a period of intense popular interest in the construction of the Panama Canal by changing the town's name from Harrison to Panama City, because a straight line between Chicago and the capital of the Central American country of Panama intersected the Florida town. Additionally, since required meanders around land formations in a seaborne route to the canal added distance when starting at other ports, Panama City was the closest developed port in the US mainland to the Caribbean entrance of the Panama Canal.