1913 – Happy Birthday Bay County, which was carved out of Washington and part of Calhoun County on this date. In February 1913, representatives from five towns on St. Andrews Bay met in Panama City to select a name for a proposed new county. Panama City was chosen as the county seat a year later and remains the most populous city. The name Bay was selected because it was satisfactory to the majority of the citizens and was descriptive of the territory that would be included. The population of Bay County in 1920 was 11,407, in 2010 it swelled to 168,852. Hundreds of thousands of visitors travel to Bay County’s beaches every year for the crystal blue gulf water. Bay County was also the original arrest site of Clarence Earl Gideon whose conviction appeal eventually resulted in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), which gave all persons accused of a crime the right to an attorney. The decision in Gideon created and then expanded public defenders. Immediately following the decision, Florida required that public defenders must work in all sixteen of the state's circuit courts. The need for more public defenders also led to a need to ensure that the defenders are properly trained in legal defense to allow defendants to receive as fair of a case as possible. Several states and counties followed suit.