Part of the Jacksonville Beaches communities and located in Duval County, Atlantic Beach is a quasi-independent town. Like the other towns, it maintains its own municipal government but its residents vote in the Jacksonville mayoral election and have representation on the Jacksonville city council.

Development of Atlantic Beach took off around 1900 after Henry Flagler built the Mayport stop of his East Coast Railway to the north of the town. The Atlantic Beach Corporation bought and developed most of the land in what is now Atlantic Beach in 1915, and the town was incorporated in 1926. The town was expanded in the 1987 when it annexed Seminole Beach, which had previously been within the city limits of Jacksonville.