Writing
Notes, essays, and research from Old Titusville.
- Editorial
What 'Old Titusville' means, an editorial position
What this site covers: Titusville from Sand Point and Henry Titus through the county seat, the railroads, the freeze, the Moores and the space age.
- Parks
Sand Point Park: Titusville's river park, named for the town's first name
Sand Point Park is a 29.88-acre city park on the Indian River at U.S. 1 and the Max Brewer Causeway, home to Titusville Little League and the Astronaut Memorial. Its name is the one the town carried until 1873.
- Space Era
January 28, 1986: Challenger, and how Titusville remembers it
Challenger lifted off from Pad 39B at 11:38 a.m. on January 28, 1986, in 36-degree air, the coldest launch yet, and broke apart 73 seconds later. What the presidential commission found, and the memorial across the river in Titusville.
- Sports
Titusville High School football and the back-to-back state titles of 1982 and 1983
Titusville High won Florida's Class 3A championship two years running, beating Osceola 33-0 in 1982 and Palatka 28-21 in 1983, after losing the 1980 final to Gainesville. Its crosstown neighbor, Astronaut High, reached the 2000 Class 3A final.
- Disasters
Hurricane David, 1979: When It Hit Florida, Its Category, and Brevard's Damage
Hurricane David came ashore just north of Palm Beach at midday on September 3, 1979, as a Category 2, then ran its eye up the Brevard coast that night. What it did to Titusville and the county.
- Environment
The Enchanted Forest Sanctuary: Titusville's piece of Brevard's Environmentally Endangered Lands
The Enchanted Forest Sanctuary in Titusville is a 481-acre preserve of Brevard County's Environmentally Endangered Lands Program, which voters created in 1990. Its Management and Education Center, opened in 2003, was the program's first.
- Environment
The Indian River Lagoon at Titusville: the 2011 superbloom and what followed
Titusville sits on the northern Indian River Lagoon, the reach covered by the 2011 superbloom that cost the lagoon about 31,600 acres of seagrass in a few months. What the water district, the state wildlife agency and Brevard County record about the collapse and the response.
- Institutions
The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame: from its 1990 opening to Heroes and Legends
The surviving Mercury 7 astronauts and Betty Grissom founded the Mercury 7 Foundation, and in May 1990 the Astronaut Hall of Fame opened outside the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Delaware North took it over in 2002 and moved it into the visitor complex's Heroes and Legends attraction in 2016.
- Government
Titusville and Cocoa: The County Seat and the Bigger Town
Cocoa passed Titusville in population by 1920 and stayed bigger until the space boom, yet the Brevard County seat never left Titusville. The census numbers, and where county government actually went.
- Parks
Space View Park and the U.S. Space Walk of Fame
Titusville dedicated Space View Park on the Indian River in July 1994. The U.S. Space Walk of Fame Foundation built its monuments to the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle programs between 1995 and 2014, with the names of the workers who built them.
- Space Era
The Apollo-era population boom in Titusville, census by census
Titusville had 2,604 people in 1950, 6,410 in 1960 and 30,515 in 1970, almost five times as many in a single decade. Growth slowed after Apollo: 31,910 in 1980. What the census and a 1966 study for NASA show about the boom.
- Government
The Brevard County Courthouse in Titusville: 1882 and 1913
Brevard's first courthouse was a two-story wooden building finished in 1882 on land Henry Titus gave the county. Its concrete replacement opened in March 1913 and still stands at 506 South Palm Avenue.
- Agriculture
Mims: the grove town north of Titusville
Mims began in the 1880s as an offshoot of La Grange, built a railroad depot and packing plant on the line from Enterprise, and lived on citrus through the 1894-95 freeze and after. What the records show about the town and its groves.
- Civil Rights
Harry T. and Harriette Moore: the Christmas-night bombing in Mims, 1951
At about 10:20 p.m. on December 25, 1951, a bomb under the bedroom of NAACP leader Harry T. Moore's home in Mims killed him; his wife Harriette died nine days later. In 2006 Florida's attorney general named four Klansmen, all dead, as the likely bombers.
- Disasters
The Great Freeze of 1894-95 at Titusville
Titusville fell to 18°F on December 29, 1894, and to 19°F on February 8, 1895, after a warm spell had pushed the trees into new growth. What the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Park Service record about the freeze and what came after.
- Agriculture
Citrus shipping from Titusville, 1885 through the 1894-95 freeze
When the railroad from Enterprise reached Titusville in 1885, the town became the transfer point for Indian River fruit: boat to the Broad Street wharf, then train north. The Great Freeze of 1894-95 wiped out the crop, and the trade came back in a different shape.
- Transportation
The Indian River steamboats and Titusville as the transfer point
From 1885 to 1893 Titusville was where the railroad met the Indian River steamboats: trains ran onto a dock in the lagoon, and the boats carried passengers, mail and freight south. The steamer Rockledge, President Cleveland's 1888 trip, and how Flagler's railway ended the trade.
- Railroad
The Railroad Reaches Titusville: the 1885 Enterprise Line and Flagler's 1893 Arrival
Titusville's first railroad was a 35-mile line from Enterprise on the St. Johns River, opened in 1885 and run by the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West. Henry Flagler's railway didn't arrive until January 1893.
- Government
Why Titusville Is the Brevard County Seat
Titusville has been the Brevard County seat since 1879, when Brevard annexed the town from Volusia County and voters chose it over Eau Gallie and Rockledge. How it won, and why the seat never moved.
- Early Titusville
The Titus House: Henry Titus's hotel, from about 1870 to the Dixie Hotel fire of 1962
Henry Titus finished his hotel at Sand Point around 1870. After his death it became the Indian River Hotel, then by 1915 the Dixie Hotel, which stood until a 1962 fire. What the markers and the National Park Service record about it.
- Places
La Grange Church and Cemetery: the pioneer burial ground of north Brevard
La Grange Church began as a log meeting house in 1869, the first church on the Indian River, and its cemetery holds Henry Titus and the Mims family. Next door, the LaGrange Mims Community Cemetery holds Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore.
- Pre-Founding
Sand Point before Henry Titus: Windover, Fort Ann and an 1859 post office
People lived on this stretch of the Indian River 8,000 years before Titusville. What the National Register records say about the place before 1867: the Windover burials, the Seminole War fort, the first post office south of St. Augustine, and a Confederate salt works.
- Founders
Henry Theodore Titus and the founding of Titusville, 1867
Cuba filibuster, Kansas 'Border Ruffian,' Nicaragua soldier and Confederate-era blockade runner: Henry T. Titus came to Sand Point on the Indian River in 1867, built its first hotel, and renamed the town after himself in 1873.