Titusville Florida Since 1867
From Henry Titus's hotel to the Apollo gateway.
Titusville is a small Florida town that became a county seat in 1880, the FEC Railway's first deep-south depot in 1885, and the place where, on July 16 1969, a quarter of a million people crowded the Indian River to watch Saturn V leave the planet. This is its history, sourced.
Latest articles
Six most-recent pieces. The full archive lives on the articles page.
- Editorial
What 'Old Titusville' means, an editorial position
Why this site exists, what it covers, and what 'Old Titusville' is meant to evoke beyond nostalgia.
- Institutions
The Florida Wildlife Hospital: forty years of native wildlife rehabilitation in Brevard County
Founded in Titusville in 1973, the Florida Wildlife Hospital has treated tens of thousands of injured native animals from across central Florida. It's one of the longest-running independent wildlife rehab centers in the state.
- Parks
Sand Point Park: the modern lagoon-front park that carries the older name
Sand Point Park on the Indian River waterfront is the city's primary recreational waterfront, named after the pre-Titusville settlement and operated by the city since the 1960s.
- Space Era
January 28, 1986: Titusville and the Challenger viewing crowd
Schoolchildren and families lined the Titusville waterfront the morning of Space Shuttle Challenger's launch. The mission ended 73 seconds in. For Brevard County the loss was personal.
- Sports
Titusville High School football: state titles and the small-school tradition
Titusville High has produced multiple FHSAA state championships in football across several classifications. The 1990s and 2000s saw the program peak; the rivalry with Astronaut High shapes Friday nights in the city.
- Disasters
Hurricane David's Brevard County impact, September 1979
David hit Titusville and Brevard as a downgraded tropical storm on September 3-4, 1979, after a Caribbean track that had killed thousands in the Dominican Republic. The Florida impact was severe but not catastrophic.
What this site is
Old Titusville covers the city of Titusville, the seat of Brevard County, from Henry Theodore Titus's arrival in 1867 through the Apollo and Shuttle eras and into the post-NASA decline that's still working itself out. Coverage extends north to Mims, where Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriette were assassinated in their home on Christmas night 1951, and east across the lagoon to the launch pads that pulled tens of thousands of jobs into the area during the 1960s.
Titusville is the county seat. The county's record starts here.