Writing
Notes, essays, and research from Old Space Coast.
- About
What Old Space Coast Means, The Editorial Premise
Brevard County had a history before the rockets. The lagoon was here. The Ais were here. The citrus growers were here. This publication is about all of that, on its own terms.
- Surfing
Surfing History of the Space Coast
Cocoa Beach became the East Coast surf capital in the 1960s. Kelly Slater grew up surfing the Cocoa Beach Pier. The East Coast Surfing Championships have run since 1964.
- Economic history
The 1973 Oil Crisis and Brevard's Space-Program Layoffs
Apollo wound down through 1972. The 1973 oil embargo hit a Brevard economy already reeling from the post-Apollo aerospace contraction. Unemployment exceeded 15 percent in 1974.
- Recreation
Recreational Fishing on the Space Coast, 1900 to Now
Mosquito Lagoon redfish, the snook regulations of the 1980s, the charter-boat tradition out of Port Canaveral. Brevard's recreational fishing identity predates the space program and outlasted citrus.
- County history
Why Titusville is the County Seat (and not Cocoa or Melbourne)
Brevard's county seat moved from LaGrange (1855-1879) to Titusville (1879-present). The Cocoa-Rockledge area has tried to relocate it multiple times. Titusville's railroad connection in 1885 cemented its administrative role.
- City history
The Eau Gallie / Melbourne Merger of 1969
Eau Gallie and Melbourne were separate cities for almost a century before merging in 1969. The merger created the city of Melbourne in its modern form.
- Education
Brevard Schools, 1880 to 1960
One-room schoolhouses, the segregated dual school system, the post-war consolidation. The school district grew from a handful of one-room buildings in 1880 to dozens of campuses serving 35,000 students by 1960.
- County history
The Mosquito Lagoon and the Original Mosquito County
Brevard County was carved out of Mosquito County in 1855. The Mosquito Lagoon at the north end of the Indian River system kept the name even after the county was renamed twice.
- Civil rights
Harry T. Moore, Killed in Mims on Christmas Day 1951
Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore were killed by a Klan bombing of their Mims home on December 25, 1951. The first NAACP official murdered in the modern civil-rights era.
- Civil rights
Black History in Brevard County
Brevard's Black history runs from the Freedmen's settlements of the 1860s through the Mims civil-rights movement and Harry T. Moore's 1951 murder, to the long process of school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Infrastructure
The Florida Inland Navigation District and the Intracoastal Waterway
The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway through the Indian River was dredged in stages between 1881 and 1965, deepening a natural lagoon system into a continuous navigation channel.
- Agriculture
Brevard County Agriculture, 1850 to 1970
Cattle came first, then citrus and pineapples, then a brief sugar-cane experiment. By 1970 the space program had bought out most of the agricultural land. The grove rows are subdivisions now.
- Natural history
The Indian River Lagoon Ecosystem
The Indian River Lagoon is the most biodiverse estuary in North America, with over 4,300 documented species. It's also collapsing, with seagrass loss, algal blooms, and manatee mortality at unprecedented levels.
- Infrastructure
The Banana River Causeway Story
Five bridges and causeways connect mainland Brevard to the barrier islands. Each one was built to solve a specific problem and each one rewired the local economy as soon as it opened.
- Weather
Hurricane History of Brevard County
Major storm hits on Brevard: 1926, 1933, 1947, 1979 (David), 2004 (Frances and Jeanne), 2016 (Matthew), 2017 (Irma). The Atlantic coast of Florida runs lighter than the Gulf, but each storm rewrites the coastline.
- Agriculture
The 1962 Freeze and the Long Collapse of Brevard Citrus
The December 1962 freeze killed most of Brevard's inland citrus and started the trend that ended the industry. By the late 1980s the last commercial packing house was closing.
- Space program
Brevard County in the Apollo Era, 1961 to 1975
Brevard's population tripled during Apollo. The county built schools, water systems, and subdivisions in a hurry, then absorbed a 20 percent workforce contraction when the program ended.
- Branding
When Did It Become the Space Coast?
The 'Space Coast' name appeared in Brevard County tourism brochures around 1962-63 and was being used officially by the Cocoa Beach Chamber of Commerce by 1965. Before that it was 'Cape Coast' or just 'the Indian River.'
- Space program
Project Bumper and the First Launch from Cape Canaveral, July 24, 1950
Bumper 8 lifted off from Launch Complex 3 at 9:28 AM on July 24, 1950. It was a recycled V-2 first stage with a WAC Corporal second stage, badly malfunctioning, and the formal beginning of the space program on the Space Coast.
- Military
The Naval Air Station at Banana River, 1940 to 1947
Before NASA, before Patrick Space Force Base, the site was a naval air station for anti-submarine patrols over the Atlantic. NAS Banana River trained crews for PBM Mariner flying boats and ran convoy escort through the war.
- Transportation
Indian River Steamboats and the Era of the Lagoon, 1880 to 1920
Before the railroad reached the lagoon coast, steamboats moved citrus, pineapples, and tourists up and down the Indian River. Two dozen vessels at peak. The railroad ended them in a decade.
- Agriculture
The 1894-95 Great Freeze and Brevard Citrus
Two freezes in eight weeks ended the citrus belt north of Brevard. Growers moved south. For 70 years Brevard was a citrus county, until the 1962 freeze and Cuban competition did to it what the 1894 freezes had done farther north.
- Railroads
The Florida East Coast Railroad Reaches Brevard, 1885 to 1894
Henry Flagler's railroad reached Daytona in 1889, Titusville in 1885 (under predecessor lines), and pushed south through Cocoa, Eau Gallie, and Melbourne by 1894. It rewrote the lagoon coast's economy in a decade.
- County history
How Brevard County Got Its Name (1855)
Brevard County was carved out of Mosquito County in 1855 and named for Theodore Washington Brevard, then state comptroller. The original boundaries reached as far south as Lake Okeechobee.
- First peoples
The Ais People and the Indian River, 4000 BCE to 1763
Before Brevard, before Florida, before any of it, the Indian River was home to the Ais. They held the lagoon coast for centuries, traded with shipwrecked Spaniards, and disappeared with the Treaty of Paris.