Titusville, Florida

Titusville is a city in Brevard County, Florida. The city's population was 43,761 at the 2010 United States Census, and it is the county seat of Brevard County. Titusville is on the Indian River, west of Merritt Island and the Kennedy Space Center and south-southwest of the Canaveral National Seashore. It is a principal city of the Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History

The area was once inhabited by the Ais Indians, who gathered palmetto, cocoplum and seagrape berries. They also fished the Indian River, called the Rio de Ais by Spanish explorers. By 1760, however, the tribe had disappeared due to slave raids, disease and rum. The United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821. The Seminole Wars delayed settlement.

The community was originally called Sand Point, and a post office was established in 1859, although it closed a few months later. Henry T. Titus arrived in 1867 with the intention to build a town on land owned by his wife, Mary Hopkins Titus, daughter of a prominent planter from Darien, Georgia. He laid out roads and in 1870 erected the Titus House, a large one-story hotel next to a saloon. He also donated land for four churches and a courthouse, the latter an effort to get the town designated as county seat.