Writing
Notes, essays, and research from Old Titusville.
- 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.
- Cemeteries
La Grange Cemetery and the pioneer burials of north Brevard
Founded in the 1850s on the Titusville–Mims line, La Grange Cemetery holds the graves of Henry Titus, Harry and Harriette Moore, and several generations of pre-FEC Brevard pioneers.
- Environment
The Enchanted Forest Sanctuary: north Brevard's surviving hardwood hammock
Brevard County's Enchanted Forest Sanctuary preserves nearly 470 acres of the eastern hardwood hammocks that once covered most of the Indian River ridge. The county acquired it in 1991.
- Environment
The Indian River Lagoon at Titusville: ecology, impairment, and recovery efforts
The Indian River Lagoon system is North America's most biodiverse estuary. At Titusville's latitude it's also one of the most impaired, with documented seagrass loss and recurring algal blooms.
- Institutions
The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville: 1990 opening to current operation
Established by the Mercury Seven astronauts and opened in 1990 on US-1 near Titusville, the Astronaut Hall of Fame is now part of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
- Government
The Titusville–Cocoa connection: county-seat politics across the lagoon
Cocoa is bigger. Titusville has the seat. The standoff between the two largest Brevard County cities shaped every 20th-century debate over relocating the courthouse.
- Parks
Space View Park and the public launch-viewing tradition
Established by the City of Titusville for public launch viewing across the Indian River, Space View Park has been the mainland's most-used vantage point on Pad 39A for over thirty years.
- Space Era
The Apollo-era population boom and bust in Titusville
Titusville's population grew from 2,604 in 1950 to over 30,000 by 1970. The post-Apollo years stalled that growth and emptied parts of the 1960s housing stock.
- Space Era
Titusville as Apollo gateway: hotels, motels, and the launch crowds
From the early 1960s through the end of Apollo, Titusville sat directly across the Indian River from Pad 39A. The town's hotel and motel inventory tripled to handle the launch tourist surge.
- Government
The Brevard County Courthouse in Titusville: 1882, 1912, and 1990s
Three courthouses on or near the same downtown block. The 1882 wood-frame structure burned in 1894. The 1912 brick replacement still stands. The active courthouse opened in 1994.
- Agriculture
Mims, the orange groves, and the slow recovery after 1895
Mims sits five miles north of Titusville, on the climate edge for commercial citrus. The 1894–95 freeze nearly ended the local industry; what came back was smaller and more diversified.
- Civil Rights
Harry T. and Harriette Moore: the Christmas-night bombing in Mims, 1951
On December 25, 1951, a bomb planted under the bedroom of NAACP organizer Harry T. Moore killed him and, nine days later, his wife Harriette. The case was never prosecuted in their lifetimes. The FBI named four KKK members in 2006.
- Disasters
The Great Freeze of 1894–95 and northern Brevard County
Two December–February cold events ended the Indian River citrus boom. Titusville and Mims, at the climate zone's northern edge, lost more groves than they recovered.
- Agriculture
Citrus shipping from Titusville, 1880s through the 1894 freeze
For a decade Titusville moved more Indian River citrus to Northern markets than any other point on the lagoon. The 1894–95 freeze ended it overnight.
- Transportation
The Indian River steamboat era and Titusville as transit hub
Before the FEC railroad arrived in 1885, Titusville was the northern transit point for a hundred-mile lagoon-and-steamboat network that ran south to Jupiter Inlet.
- Railroad
The Florida East Coast Railway reaches Titusville, 1885
Henry Flagler's southward push from Jacksonville hit Titusville first. The town went from Indian River steamboat terminus to FEC depot in a single year, and never looked the same.
- Government
Titusville becomes county seat, 1880
Brevard County moved its seat from Lake Harney to Titusville in 1880. The vote was close, the politics were railroad-shaped, and the change held.
- Early Titusville
The Sand Point Hotel and the Titus House, 1873 to the early 1900s
Henry Titus's hotel was the social and commercial center of early Titusville for thirty years, then disappeared in stages through fires and redevelopment.
- Pre-Founding
Sand Point: the settlement that existed before Henry Titus arrived
A small Indian River community of grove keepers, boatmen, and Civil War-era refugees occupied the bluff at present-day Titusville for decades before Henry Titus renamed it.
- Founders
Henry Theodore Titus and the founding of Titusville, 1867
The Mexican-American War veteran, Kansas border-war partisan, and Nicaraguan filibuster who put his name on a county-seat town on the Indian River.