Cocoa is the gateway to America's Spaceport. But before it became the tourist haven it is today, it was a small village settled by fishermen and their families. The city's location on the Indian River Lagoon made it central to early steamboat passage and breathed life into fishing and commerce. After World War II, the space age brought science and engineering to nearby Cape Canaveral. The city also has a history of baseball nearly as long as the sport itself. It was home to the Cocoa Fliers of the 1940s and hosted the Houston Colt 45s during spring training for twenty years. Join author Bob Harvey as he recounts the sunny history of one of the Space Coast's oldest cities.
Explore Brevard County with this updated edition of the definitive guidebook to the area. Visitors and residents alike will enjoy exploring Brevard County, a recreational paradise where the high-tech space program exists alongside amazing natural areas like the Indian River Lagoon estuary—the most diverse marine estuary in the U.S. Comprehensive listings make this your most informative and entertaining vacation-planning tool.
The history of Cocoa and its bedroom community, Rockledge, falls into two time frames: the first is exploration and settlement; the second began in the 1950s when the Space Age began and drastic change ensued. It takes a mighty stretch of the imagination to leap from the founding and settlement of St. Augustine--a few miles north and a few centuries prior--to the incorporation of Cocoa and Rockledge. Of course, over the centuries, there were people in the area--hunters, fisherman, Native Americans, adventurers--but no true settlers until after the War Between the States, when people sought to make a new life in a new place. Geographically, the area featured in this volume includes Cocoa to the north, the Indian River to the east, Pineda to the south, and the St. Johns River to the west, the only river in the United States that flows north. Once famous for citrus, fishing, tourism, and mosquitoes, the space program and its service industries now dominate the economy of the area.
The New York Times bestselling author of A Certain Age transports readers to sunny Florida in this lush and enthralling historical novel—an enchanting blend of love, suspense, betrayal, and redemption set among the rumrunners and scoundrels of Prohibition-era Cocoa Beach. Burdened by a dark family secret, Virginia Fortescue flees her oppressive home in New York City for the battlefields of World War I France. While an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, she meets a charismatic British army surgeon whose persistent charm opens her heart to the possibility of love. As the war rages, Virginia falls into a passionate affair with the dashing Captain Simon Fitzwilliam, only to discover that his past has its own dark secrets—secrets that will damage their eventual marriage and propel her back across the Atlantic to the sister and father she left behind. Five years later, in the early days of Prohibition, the newly widowed Virginia Fitzwilliam arrives in the tropical boomtown of Cocoa Beach, Florida, to settle her husband’s estate. Despite the evidence, Virginia does not believe Simon perished in the fire that destroyed the seaside home he built for her and their young daughter. Separated from her husband since the early days of their marriage, the headstrong Virginia plans to uncover the truth, for the sake of the daughter Simon never met. Simon’s brother and sister welcome her with open arms and introduce her to a dazzling new world of citrus groves, white beaches, bootleggers, and Prohibition agents. But Virginia senses a predatory presence lurking beneath the irresistible, hedonistic surface of this coastal oasis. The more she learns about Simon and his mysterious business interests, the more she fears that the dangers that surrounded Simon now threaten her and their daughter’s life as well.
Weona Cleveland was a journalist for more than 30 years at the Melbourne Times and later Florida Today newspaper. Her articles about local history and culture earned her a dedicated audience of readers. In 2006, the Brevard County Commissioners named her Honorary County Historian. This book is a collection of some of Weona Cleveland's best articles about pioneer life in Brevard, Osceola, Orange, and Indian River counties, including stories from Haulover Canal, Cape Canaveral, Bovine, and Rockledge.
