Merritt Island, Florida

• 1. Introduction

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  Merritt Island owes its name to the King of Spain, who once gave the entire island as a land grant to a nobleman named Merritt. That nobleman left only a name. Centuries later, the place he was granted would hold something neither he nor any Spanish king could have imagined. Today Merritt Island is a peninsula in Brevard County, Florida, pressed against the Atlantic Ocean on the state's eastern coast. It is also an unincorporated town and a census-designated place, home to 34,518 people at the 2020 census. How did a Spanish land grant become a stretch of citrus groves, vanished towns, and a launch pad for rockets? What lies buried beneath this sandy ground, and what still walks its northern half? The answers begin long before any king drew a map.

• 2. Bones In The Sand

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  Paleontological excavations on Merritt Island have pulled the bones of vanished giants from the soil. Mammoths and mastodons, camels and tapirs, beavers and capybaras, armadillos and the heavily armored glyptodonts all once moved through this region. These herbivorous ungulates and other species thrived until roughly 11,000 years ago. A larger North American extinction event then wiped out most of the native megafauna. The cause may have been climate change tied to the advance or retreat of the glacial maximum, which reshaped natural resources and weather. Around the same time, the Clovis culture appeared, prolific hunters armed with distinct fluted stone weaponry. Their toolkit included some of the earliest spears and arrowheads. Biochemical analysis has shown that Clovis tools were used to hunt camelids in this very landscape. By between 800 and 900 BC, permanent Native American structures stood here. Their mounds rose along the margins of the lagoon, the first lasting marks of people on the island.

• 3. Spaniards And Seminoles

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  In 1605, Spanish explorer Álvaro Mexía visited the tribes living along the Indian River. He met the Ais people, part of the native province of Ulumay, and drew a color map of the area. Merritt Island stands out as the prominent island on that map. Copies survive in the archives at the Library of Congress and in Seville, Spain. Within a few years, nearly all of these natives were dead. An epidemic swept the area after a British merchant ship ran aground. In April 1788, French botanist André Michaux came to Merritt Island near Cape Canaveral and spent five days studying the local plants. In a letter written from St. Augustine on the 24th of April 1788, he reported finding the bigflower paw-paw, Asimina obovata. In 1837, Fort Ann was built on the island's east coast near present-day Haulover Canal, raised to protect the area against the local Seminoles.

• 4. Oranges And Vanished Towns

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  The Indian River oranges and grapefruit come from this sandy ground. Merritt Island's recent history dates to the mid-19th century and centers on citrus, with an emphasis on oranges and pineapples. The cultivation built a whole local economy out of the soil. Freezes temporarily destroyed the pineapple industry in the late 1890s. After the Civil War, freed slaves built small towns across the area, among them Haulover, Clifton, and Shiloh. The Space Race changed everything in the 1950s and 1960s, as the island's population grew and nearby NASA expanded. A barge canal cut to the Intracoastal Waterway from the Atlantic, dug for power plant oil shipments, severed the northern half of the island for many years. Those small towns vanished with the coming of the Space Age. Now they live on only in the names of streets and historic churches. In 1988, residents voted down a proposed incorporation into a city, 77% opposed to 23% in favor.

• 5. Birds, Gators, And Feral Pigs

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  About 356 species of birds live on the peninsula, one of the most diverse bird populations in the country. To the north, the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and the narrow barrier island of Canaveral National Seashore form an unpopulated buffer for rocket launches at Kennedy Space Center. Migratory birds join resident wildlife that includes alligators, manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, bald eagles, ospreys, bobcats, and the elusive Florida panther. Bald eagle nests are monitored atop power line poles along SR 3 inside the space center. North Merritt Island carries a heavier burden: about 12,000 feral pigs. Licensed trappers catch roughly 2,000 each year, which holds the population steady. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service would prefer to reduce their numbers further.

• 6. A Body Of Water

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  Merritt Island extends some 46 miles from the Volusia County line to Dragon Point near Melbourne. According to the United States Census Bureau, the census-designated place spans 122.2 square kilometers, of which 45.4 square kilometers is land. The remaining 76.8 square kilometers, or 62.88 percent, is water. To the west, the Indian River and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway separate it from the mainland. To the east lie the Mosquito Lagoon and the Banana River, dividing it from the barrier island that holds Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach. The island's east side splits further, cut by Sykes Creek and Newfound Harbor. In the north, the Haulover Canal, first dug in the 19th century, parts the island from the mainland. Causeways tie it to Brevard County near Titusville and Cocoa in the north and Melbourne in the south. To the east, the island connects to Cape Canaveral by the Crawlerway, the path along which rockets roll.

• 7. Who Lives Here

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  At the 2020 census, the median age on Merritt Island was 52.2 years, marking an older community. About 26.1 percent of residents were 65 or older, while 16.3 percent were under 18. Among 15,030 households, 48.3 percent were married-couple households. Nearly 29.5 percent were made up of individuals living alone, and 15.2 percent held someone 65 or older living by themselves. Almost everyone, 99.9 percent of residents, lived in urban areas. The population had slipped slightly from 34,743 at the 2010 census. Earlier still, the 2000 census counted 36,090 people, with a median household income of $43,532 and a per capita income of $23,961. The central part of the island, once known as Merritt City, holds most of the population along with the high school, library, and shopping district.

• 8. Work And Learning

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  Sea Ray Boats ran a factory on Merritt Island from 1978 to 2012, employing 1,200 people at its peak before closing the plant in 2013. Light industrial fabrication centers cluster around the Merritt Island Airport, a public general aviation field run by the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority. NASA-related activity supports rocket launches at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, work that outlasted the Space Shuttle's retirement in the summer of 2011. Air Liquide operates a plant on the island, and Arnott Air Suspension Products is headquartered here. Brevard Public Schools runs the island's public schools, among them Merritt Island High School and the Robert Louis Stevenson School of the Arts. The Merritt Island Public Library carries an unusual status. Because the area is unincorporated, in 1965 it applied for and received designation as a special library district under Chapter 65-1289 by the Florida Legislature. On Pine Island stands Sams House, built in 1875 and counted as Brevard's oldest standing structure.