Brevard County, Florida
Brevard County is a county in the U.S. state of Florida. It is on the Atlantic coast of eastern Central Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 606,612, making it the 10th-most populated county in Florida. The official county seat is located in Titusville. A secondary center of county administration, including a circuit courthouse, was built in 1989 in the planned community of Viera, Florida, the geographic center of the county.
History
The first Paleoindians arrived in the area near Brevard county between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago.Before the arrival of non-indigenous settlers in the 16th century, the area was inhabited by Native Americans. The county is the site of the Windover Archeological Site, which contained evidence of habitation over 7,000 years ago. Brevard County was established in 1855 and is named after Theodore Washington Brevard, an early Florida settler and state comptroller. The county's boundaries were changed and reduced numerous times, resulting in the current boundary since 1907.
The Paleoindians were semi-nomadic people who lived in smaller groups. After a few thousand years, a new group of settlers appeared known as "the archaic people." These people were primarily fishermen, as opposed to the hunting and gathering way of life which characterized the Paleoindians. The Windover Archeological Site, discovered in 1982, was found during excavation to have the largest collection of human remains and artifacts of the early Archaic Period, or more than 8,000 years ago. It has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. The Windover pond, which would have been a woody marsh at the time, was used by the Archaic Floridians as a burial ground, with the bodies being wrapped in fabric and submerged in the peaty soil. The pond was used for interments for around a thousand years.
The Ais and the Jaega were the dominant tribes in the area when it is thought that Ponce De Leon landed on the shores near Melbourne Beach in 1513. There were about 10,000 of these natives in the area. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés gave an early account of the Ais people in 1570 when he was shipwrecked off of Cape Canaveral. He faced hostile natives but through the use of a bluff was able to escape from them and get back to St. Augustine. In 1605, Alvero Mexia was dispatched from St. Augustine to the Indian River area on a diplomatic mission to the Ais Indian Nation. He helped establish a "Period of Friendship" with the Ais Caciques and made a color map of the area.
During the 19th century, the state of Florida frequently changed the names and borders of counties. St. Lucie County was split off from Mosquito County in 1844. St. Lucie County was renamed Brevard County in 1855 after Theodore Washington Brevard, who served as Florida Comptroller from 1854 to 1860. This "Brevard County" contained very little of present-day Brevard County. Most of present-day Brevard north of Melbourne was part of either Volusia or Orange counties. Brevard County in 1856 extended as far west as Polk County and as far south as coastal Dade County. Complicating the discussion of Brevard County in the 19th century is that the boundaries have shifted such that the southernmost parts of present-day Brevard, were originally the northernmost parts. The original county seat was located at Susannah, an early name for present day Fort Pierce. Later the southern part of Brevard split off to form a new county, St. Lucie County in 1905. Gradually, the borders of Brevard County were shifted northward while the county got "pinched" eastward. The portions of Brevard County in present-day Broward and Palm Beach counties were given to Dade County, western areas of the county were given to Polk and Osceola County, and parts of Volusia and Orange Counties were given to Brevard including the eventual county seat of Titusville. Later, the southern portion of the county was cut off to form St. Lucie County, which in turn spawned Martin and Indian River County.
The first concerted development the area occurred with the extension of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad into the area. The railroad reached Titusville in 1886 and Melbourne in 1894. With the railroad came increased settlement and the first tourists. The first major land boom began in the 1920s after the end of World War I. People flooded into the state of Florida, both tourists from northern winters and new full-time residents, and land prices soared. The Great Depression temporarily stopped growth in Florida. Before the start of World War II, the largest industries in Brevard were commercial fishing, citrus, and tourism.
Beginning in the 1930s, Harry T. Moore was a civil rights leader, teacher, and founder of the Brevard County NAACP. After the war he became president of the state NAACP. After the Supreme Court had ruled in 1944 that white primaries were unconstitutional, he conducted voter registration drives and succeeded in registering 31% of black voters in Florida, a higher percentage than in any other southern state. The white establishment resisted, firing both him and his wife Harriette in 1946 from their teaching positions. On Christmas night, 1951, a bomb exploded under their home, fatally injuring both of them. Four separate investigations were conducted, including the first by the FBI in 1951–1952, and the last in 2005 by the state. No one was ever prosecuted.
In 1940, the United States federal government built Naval Air Station Banana River. Patrick Air Force Base was renamed to Patrick Space Force Base on December 9, 2020, as part of the establishment of the U.S. Space Force. This military installation was the first of major federal investment in projects to aid the development of Brevard County. In the late 1950s, the government opened the Long Range Proving Ground. This later became the Kennedy Space Center. The establishment of the Kennedy Space Center, originally known as Launch Operations Center, significantly impacted the area's identity and prominence, it attracted more educated workers and scientists associated with the program. In 1962, NASA acquired more than 200 square miles of land on Merritt Island to facilitate the recently announced lunar program of operations. The preceding year, U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy had pledged to get the first American astronaut on the Moon by 1970. The Launch Operations Center name was changed to honor President Kennedy following his assassination in 1963. Work immediately began on a new launch complex—Launch Complex 39. In addition, the Vehicle Assembly Building, for the construction of spacecrafts, was built by 1966. The first launch from the new facility was the Saturn V rocket launch of the Apollo 4 mission on November 9, 1967. Twelve more Saturn V launches followed, including the historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969 that landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. The final Saturn V launch, in 1973, carried the Skylab space station to orbit. The launch complex was then adapted for the space shuttle program, and each shuttle, from 1981 until the final mission in 2011, launched from this complex . Beginning in the 1960s, new bridges were constructed across the waterways designed as high-rise steel, designed to be high enough to allow passage of boats underneath.
Brevard County is known as the Space Coast due to the influence of the John F. Kennedy Space Center and the aerospace industry on its economy. As such, it was designated with the telephone area code 321, as in "3, 2, 1 liftoff". The county has several incorporated cities and towns, primarily along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and is mostly suburban west of Interstate 95. Brevard County comprises the Cities of Palm Bay– Melbourne– Titusville, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Attributed to the length of the county, people in the southern portion of the county complained about being so distant from the county seat. The county seat of Titusville was from Palm Bay. Palm Bay is the largest city in Brevard County and the second largest in Central Florida, by population. The county decided to build a new county administration complex at Viera near the geographical center of the county. This complex was started in 1989 and completed in 1994. Residents in the north threatened secession. Their proposal to form a new county, to be called Playalinda, had some momentum in the early 90s. The county made a few concessions to the people in the northern part of the county, and agreed not to officially move the county seat. Since construction of the new center, Viera has been for all intents and purposes the de facto seat of Brevard County.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of, of which is land and is water. Most of the water is the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Johns River and the Indian River Lagoon. The county is larger in area than the nation of Samoa and nearly the same size, and population, as Cape Verde.Located halfway between Jacksonville and Miami, Brevard County extends from north to south, and averages wide. Emphasizing the position halfway down Florida are two state roads that have been numbered at the midpoint of Florida's numbering system, State Road 50 and State Road 500. Marshes in the western part of this county, together with those in neighboring Indian River country, are the source of the St. Johns River, which becomes navigable within the county.
The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway along the eastern edge of Brevard County is the major waterway route in Brevard County. It includes the Indian River. Additional waterways include Lake Washington, Lake Poinsett, Lake Winder, Sawgrass Lake, the St. Johns River, and the Banana River. Dredging for the Intracoastal created 41 spoil islands in the Brevard portion of the Indian River.
Brevard County is the sole county in the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Palm Bay, Melbourne, and Titusville are designated as principal cities in the MSA. The MSA was created as the Melbourne-Titusville-Cocoa, Florida Standard MSA in 1972, renamed the Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay, Florida MSA in 1983, and given its current title in 2003.
The county is unofficially divided into three sections: North County, comprising Titusville, Mims and Port St. John; Central Brevard, which includes Cocoa, Rockledge, Merritt Island, and Cocoa Beach; and South County, which includes Melbourne, Palm Bay, Grant-Valkaria, and the South Beaches. There are also several beaches along the coast of the county. The North Reach includes of coastline from Cape Canaveral, through Cocoa Beach, to Patrick Space Force Base. The Patrick Space Force Base beach is long. South of Patrick SFB, the Mid Reach includes the of coastline in Satellite Beach. The South Reach includes of beach in the communities of Indialantic and Melbourne Beach. At the southern end of the county, the South Beaches are the final of beach south of Melbourne Beach to Sebastian.
The United States Board on Geographic Names considered two proposals in 2012 to officially name the barrier island extending from Port Canaveral to Sebastian Inlet. The island includes the cities of Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach, Indialantic, Melbourne Beach, Patrick Space Force Base, Indian Harbour Beach, and Satellite Beach. The American Indian Association of Florida submitted in October 2011 a proposal to name the island after the Ais people. In January 2012 the United Third Bridge and the Florida Puerto Rican/Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne submitted a proposal to name the island Ponce de León Island, after Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León. In December 2012, the island was ultimately not named.