Brevard County, Florida

From   Brevard County, Florida: A Short History to 1955    by John M. Eriksen

Originally part of St. Johns and then Mosquito, Brevard county is one of central Florida's oldest counties. Established in 1855 when it inherited the 1844 boundaries of old St. Lucie County, the area originally encompassed 7000 square miles, Florida's largest political subdivision. The county was named after a descendent of Jean Brevard. Young Jean fled France and arrived in the colony of Maryland in 1685. Brevard, N.C. received its name from the same family in the late 1830s, U.S. troops established Ft Christmas, Ft. Ann, Ft. Taylor, Ft. Pierce, and Ft. Lauderdale

Orange pickers became active in the mid 1800s at the Dummett grove. Douglas Dummett introduced the new industry to the Indian River area. This was the beginning of the world famous Indian River Citrus trade mark. Dummett had a son and three daughters. After his son died from a hunting mishap in 1860, Dummett moved his family from New Smyrna to the remote southern end of the Mosquito Lagoon in present-day Brevard County.

The "East channel" was renamed Banana River by Mills Burnham in the 1840s. The lagoons were packed with unknown and "inexhaustible" forms of marine life, free of net and hook, just as described by James Gadsden in his 1824 survey of the new territory's east coast. Early residents traveled almost exclusively by boat. From the 1850s until the 1950s, the whole region was known far and wide as the Indian River Country.

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Without roads or convenient inlets, the area remained almost uninhabited until after the Civil War. Prior to the war, the residents were few and far between.

Only within the last few thousand years did the small native population begin to accumulate a record of their long existence. Their only faux pas, garbage middens of refuse shell and bone, would become valued as campsites by European hunters and later prized as the perfect road-building material by early county commissioners. 

By 1900 much of the U.S. had already been transformed by man's inventions: fire, irrigation canals, and steam-driven machinery. But the industrial revolution bypassed Brevard. Overlooked in a world of change until the dawn of the twentieth century, the county finally welcomed the developers and speculators riding the iron horse in search of new land and opportunity. Suddenly, intensive fishing and hunting, new roads and ditches, drainage canals, lands cleared and fertilized for agriculture, experiments with exotic plants, and the dredging for inlets, causeways, parks, and mosquito control caused indelible alterations to the environment. In the relatively brief 50 years between 1900 and 1950, the seemingly timeless balance of the county's ecosystems had been tipped to serve man. The county's resources begged for respect and intelligent management during the post war boom.

However, increasing restrictions seemed to encroach on fundamental rights. New game laws made criminals of Florida's old crackers. Hunting and fishing, first necessity, then sport, were Florida's oldest business and the American way of life in the 1800s. The survival skills of hunting in the Florida woods were passed from father to son. Early laws encouraged the practice, creating bounties on certain animals. An 1832 Territorial Act awarded bounty-hunters for the destruction of any "wolf, bear, tiger, or panther." In 1841 the Council specifically targeted wolves in an "Act To Encourage The Destroying of Wolves," which paid citizens four dollars per scalp. The Florida black wolf, once a subspecies of the red wolf, is now extinct. Charles Pierce tells of the Indian River Country in the 1870s and 80s, when "it was the height of every would-be-hunter's ambition to kill a deer and among the boys,...this feat was the crowning glory of their young lives.

    Even so, by 1900 the county realized that the free-for-all was over. Since the mid-1890s, the capturing of manatees was allowed only in the interest of science and only with a county permit. Other restrictions followed in the county that unknowingly held the highest diversity of marine life in North America, starting with President Roosevelt's dedication of the nation's first wildlife sanctuary. Three-acre Pelican Island became that sanctuary in 1903. The event seemed to symbolize the end of old Brevard and the beginning of a new era--the story of man's sudden impact on the timeless cycles of nature. (Pelican Island along with about 4 miles of oceanfront below Sebastian Inlet was deeded to Indian River County by Brevard Commissioner Joe Wickham in 1959 in cooperation for bridging the inlet. At the same time, Wickham was looking for bargain land for a future park, now Wickham Park.)

    Railroad building was in peak during 1893. Flagler's cars reached Melbourne during that summer. Steamboat operation did not decline immediately, but the Indian River Country began to lose its reputation as a remote and romantic refuge of tranquil wharfs, sloops, and steamers. No longer would it be an ideal, isolated retreat, a faraway wild place that a wealthy few with hired guides would seek out to pursue winter's wildlife. With the new railroad, the lagoon would be bypassed for other attractions to the south.

     It is often asked, "Why is today's Brevard so long and unwieldy? Why is the county seat so for north? Since 1855, the county gradually lost the bulk of its less populated western and southern territories that once included the areas of today's St. Lucie, Okeechobee, Martin, Indian River and parts of Highlands, Palm Beach and Polk Counties. But these were given up without much concern. Separated by the ocean prairie, marsh and river, the last western Brevardians organized their County of Osceola in 1887. The split significantly narrowed old Brevard and it has since been committed to the historic Indian River Country, the original heart of old Brevard that we know today as Brevard County.

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