History of the City of Titusville, Florida

The area now known as present-day Titusville, Florida was once inhabited by the Ais Indians, who made their meals by gathering the region’s palmetto, cocoplum and seagrape berries.  In addition, they fished the Indian River for food.  This river eventually was referred to as the “Rio de Ais” by the Spanish who arrived years later to explore the region.  By 1760, however, the Ais tribe had largely disappeared due to enslavement, diseases brought by the European explorers and rum.  Florida was acquired by the U.S. from Spain in 1821, but the Seminole Wars would delay effective settlement.

Titusville, Florida was originally named Sand Point, where a post office was established in 1859 and closed a few months later.  The Confederate Colonel Henry T. Titus arrived in 1867, with the vision to build and develop a town on land that was owned by his wife.  Mary Hopkins Titus was the daughter of a prominent planter from Darien, Georgia.  Titus constructed roads and in 1870 built The Titus House, a large one-story hotel lo0cated next to a saloon.  During his lifetime, Titus also donated land for four churches and a courthouse, which spearheaded an effort to get the town designated as county seat.

An fascinating story is behind the name of the town, and Titusville could have been called Riceville.  In a lively game of dominoes, Titus challenged Captain Clark Rice in order to decide the name. Titus won , and Sand Point became Titusville in 1873.  Incorporated as a city in 1887, that year also saw the beginning of the construction on St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church which was listed in 1972 on the National Register of Historic Places.

Two railroad lines, the Atlantic Coast and the St. Johns & Indian River Railroads, arrived in 1885 from Enterprise, Florida.  Enterprise 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, and a railroad station was built in Titusville in 1892.  This event brought the arrival of tourists to Titusville, and the Indian River area became increasingly popular as an agricultural and shipping center for pineapple and citrus produce. A wooden bridge was built east to Playalinda Beach in 1922.

Beginning in the late 1950s and later the Kennedy Space Center on nearby Merritt Island, Titusville’s economy, population and tourism grew considerably. The association with the space program led to the city's two nicknames in the 1960s: Space City, USA and Miracle City.