Why Titusville Is the County Seat (and Not Cocoa or Melbourne)

Titusville is the Brevard County seat because county voters chose it in 1879. That year Brevard annexed the southern part of Volusia County, which included Titusville, and the enlarged county held a vote on where its government would sit. According to the National Park Service’s history of Titusville, voters picked it “overwhelmingly” over the two other contenders, Eau Gallie and Rockledge. Henry Titus, the town’s founder, had pushed for it and gave the land for county buildings, on condition it be used for nothing else.

That’s the answer to the “not Melbourne” half of the question too: Melbourne’s stake in the vote was Eau Gallie, now part of Melbourne, and it lost. Cocoa was never on the ballot. The full story of the vote and the courthouse is on Old Titusville’s county seat page.

The county before 1879

Brevard didn’t start where it is now. It was created on March 14, 1844, as St. Lucie County, and renamed Brevard County in 1855 for Theodore Washington Brevard, a North Carolinian who was Florida’s comptroller from 1853 to 1861. Titusville, settled after the Civil War, grew up across the line in Volusia County. The 1879 annexation brought it in and stretched Brevard into one of the longest counties in Florida, about 75 miles of coast. Our page on how Brevard got its name covers the 1844 to 1855 years.

The National Park Service history doesn’t say where the county’s business was done before 1879, and we haven’t found a primary record that does, so we leave that question open rather than guess.

What Titusville had going for it

Two things stand out in the record. One was Titus himself, with a town to promote and land to give: by 1879 he had a store, the Titus House hotel, the post office and the town’s name. The other was the route in. Before the railroad, travelers from the St. Johns River reached the Indian River at Titusville, either overland from Enterprise, about 42 miles, or by small steamer to Salt Lake and then overland. A railroad spur from Enterprise followed in the mid-1880s, paid for in part by $30,000 from Titusville residents.

The county met in a building rented from Titus at first, then built a two-story wooden courthouse in 1881 and 1882. In 1912 the commissioners decided, controversially, to build new rather than enlarge it. The replacement, a reinforced-concrete building by Lightman, McDonald & Co. of Jacksonville, cost $30,566 and opened on March 3, 1913, at 506 South Palm Avenue. The old courthouse was moved to the back of the lot and sold at auction.

Why it never moved

Brevard’s population moved south, first toward Cocoa, which passed Titusville in the 1920 census, and later toward Melbourne and Palm Bay. The seat stayed. What moved instead was the daily business: the Board of County Commissioners now meets at the Brevard County Government Center in Viera, near the middle of the county, and the main courthouse, the Moore Justice Center, is in Viera too. Titusville keeps the title and the 1913 courthouse, which the state’s 2005 marker says still serves the county.

So if you’re asking which city is the Brevard County seat, it’s Titusville. If you’re looking for the commission chambers, go to Viera.

Further Reading

• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon