page_title: Titusville, Florida
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Titusville, Florida / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Railroad Depot, Titusville, FL; from a c. 1905 postcard.
context_page_description: Titusville is a city and the county seat of Brevard County, Florida, United States. The city's population was 43,761 as of the 2010 United States Census.
  Titusville is located along 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.
  Near Titusville is the Windover Archeological Site, a National Historic Landmark recognizing its important collection of human remains and artifacts of the early Archaic Period
  A secondary, de facto county seat was established beginning in 1989 at Viera, Florida, in the geographic center of the county, to better serve the more populous southern portion of the county.
context_section_description: Indigenous peoples had inhabited this area for thousands of years, as shown by discovery in 1982 of the Windover Archeological Site, dating to the early Archaic Period (6000 to 5000 BCE). It has been designated as a National Historic Landmark because of the significance of its remains.
  At the time of European encounter, this area was 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 largely to infectious disease, slave raids, and the disruptive effects of rum.
  The United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, and the Seminole Wars delayed settlement of portions of the new territory.
  This 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, intending 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.
  Local history says that Titus challenged Capt. Clark Rice to a game of dominoes to decide the name of the town.  Titus won the game, and Sand Point was renamed as Titusville in 1873. The city was incorporated in 1887, the year construction began on St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church, as listed in the 1972 National Register of Historic Places.  At one point, Titusville was nicknamed "The City of Churches".
  The Atlantic Coast, St. Johns & Indian River Railroad reached Titusville in 1885, constructed from Enterprise, Florida. It was connected by a spur line to the Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West Railroad at Enterprise Junction in present-day DeBary, Florida.  Henry Flagler extended his Florida East Coast Railroad south from Daytona, building a station at Titusville in 1892.  Many tourists arrived by railroad to enjoy the mild winter climate.
  In addition, the railroad was a means to ship area produce to northern markets, and the Indian River area increasingly became an agricultural and shipping center for pineapple and citrus goods.  A wooden bridge was built east to Playalinda Beach in 1922.
  Beginning in the late 1950s, the growth of Cape Canaveral, and later the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, stimulated growth in the community's economy, population and tourism. The association with the space program led to the city's two nicknames in the 1960s: Space City USA and Miracle City.
  Searstown Mall opened in 1966.  Miracle City Mall opened in 1968, built on 32 acres (13 ha). It had 275,000 square feet (25,500 m²) of covered floor space.
  The jail at the county courthouse became overcrowded by the 1980s. Jailbreaks were common. They ceased after prisoners were moved in 1986 to a new jailhouse built in Sharpes.
  Computer Shopper was founded in Titusville in 1979 by Glenn Patch, first as a tabloid. It was later expanded as a magazine of over 800 pages per issue. It was published in Titusville until September 1989. That year operations were to be moved to New York City in a joint venture between Patch Communications of Titusville and Ziff Davis.
  The A. Max Brewer Bridge, a 65 feet (20 m) fixed high-level span on SR-406 connecting Titusville to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore, opened on February 5, 2011 to replace the former swing bridge built in 1949.
  In May 2012, the Brevard County School Board closed Riverview Elementary School for budgetary reasons. It closed South Lake Elementary School on May 25, 2013.
  In January 2013, Miracle City Mall closed, a victim of a declining local economy after the termination of the Space Shuttle program in 2012. In addition, county population had moved to the south, and changing shopping habits had adversely affected malls across the country.  Demolition of Miracle City Mall occurred February 2015. The site has been 
caption: Railroad depot c. 1905
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