Melbourne History Guide

Melbourne history runs from the Ais town of Pentoaya on the Eau Gallie River through river settlement in the 1860s and 1870s, the 1919 Front Street fire, Naval Air Station Melbourne, Florida Tech and the 1969 union with Eau Gallie.

The dates come from the state markers for Pentoya, the Gleason House, Holy Trinity and Naval Air Station Melbourne, the Eau Gallie Arts District history, Melbourne Main Street, the Florida Museum of Natural History, NASA and Florida Tech News. Each row of the table points to the Melbourne guide that tells that chapter at length.

Melbourne began as a settlement at Crane Creek on the Indian River Lagoon and took its name from Melbourne, Australia, the home of its first postmaster, Cornthwaite John Hector.

The Florida Department of State notes that the town was formerly known as Crane Creek before the name changed in honor of Hector (Florida Department of State, 2019). The sources differ on Hector himself: the Department of State calls him a Melbourne, Australia native, while Melbourne Main Street describes an Englishman who spent much of his life there (Melbourne Main Street). Melbourne Main Street adds that a pioneer, Mrs. R. W. Goode, suggested the post office name eight years before the town was established, and that Hector later opened a general store at Crane Creek (Melbourne Main Street).

The river was the road. After the Civil War, Titusville, Rockledge and Melbourne grew as trading, fishing and farming centers, and travel between them was mainly by water; Captain Lund brought the steamboat Pioneer to the Indian River in 1877 (Brevard County Historical Commission). Brevard County itself dates from an 1854 act signed early in 1855 and reached its current shape in 1905 (Brevard County Historical Commission). Melbourne Main Street credits the railroad built in 1893, the lagoon location and the Crane Creek port, where farmers shipped produce to market, for the growth of the wooden business district on Front Street (Melbourne Main Street).

The Melbourne section tells this chapter in the Founding of Melbourne guide, the Crane Creek freedmen founders guide and the Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church guide.

Eau Gallie, now the northern part of Melbourne, was settled in 1859, named by William Henry Gleason after his 1870 land purchase, and joined the City of Melbourne in 1969.

John Carroll Houston IV was the first permanent settler in the Eau Gallie area in 1859 and called the place Arlington (Eau Gallie Arts District). In 1870 Gleason, who was Florida's first elected lieutenant governor in 1868, bought a 16,000-acre tract in Brevard County and named it Eau Gallie; he moved his family there in 1882 and in 1887 offered Henry Flagler right of way to bring the railroad (Gleason House marker). His Queen Anne house at 1736 Pineapple Avenue was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997 (Gleason House marker). The Eau Gallie Arts District history instead says Gleason founded the city in 1860 (Eau Gallie Arts District); the state marker dates his purchase and naming of Eau Gallie to 1870.

Eau Gallie served as the Brevard County seat from 1874 to 1878 (Eau Gallie Arts District). In 1872 Gleason offered the legislature 2,320 acres for a state agricultural college, and a coquina building went up on the river, but in 1877 the college site was moved to Lake City and the building became the Granada Hotel (Eau Gallie Arts District). The railroad reached Eau Gallie in 1893, and the yacht basin built between 1885 and 1889 earned the name Harbor City (Eau Gallie Arts District). The same history says Eau Gallie joined Melbourne in 1969, though residents still call it Eau Gallie.

Five Melbourne guides go deeper here: the Houston family of Eau Gallie guide, the William Henry Gleason guide, the Florida Agricultural College at Eau Gallie guide, the Eau Gallie and Melbourne merger guide, and the historic cemeteries guide.

Downtown Melbourne moved after a 1919 fire destroyed the commercial buildings on Front Street, and a new business district grew on New Haven Avenue in the 1920s land boom.

Melbourne Main Street says the Ernest Kouwen-Hoven Causeway was built in the same boom to tie downtown to the barrier island (Melbourne Main Street). Melbourne Main Street says the fire destroyed all of the commercial buildings along Front Street, while the Department of State says most of the downtown was destroyed. The Department of State dates the rebirth to a bridge across the Indian River Lagoon two years after the fire, and records that Downtown Melbourne became a designated Main Street in 2002 (Florida Department of State).

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church was organized in 1884 and its heart pine church was erected in 1886 south of Crane Creek; members from the north bank came by boat and, after 1895, by footbridge (Holy Trinity marker). The building was moved in 1897 to Fee Avenue and U.S. 1, stuccoed in 1927 and moved again in 1963 (Holy Trinity marker). The First Congregational Church of Melbourne, completed in 1893 at a cost of $2,065, held its first service on July 2, 1893; its marker stands at 1824 South Harbor City Blvd (First Congregational Church marker).

Crane Creek also produced a scientific puzzle. Fossils found near Melbourne were reported to the Smithsonian Institution in 1922, joint excavations began in 1925, and the Florida Museum ranks Melbourne among the Big Three late Pleistocene sites found in Florida in the first half of the 20th century (Florida Museum of Natural History). The 1919 downtown fire guide, the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church guide, the Melbourne Man guide and the Melbourne trivia guide cover these stories.

Melbourne turned toward aviation and technology when Naval Air Station Melbourne opened at the municipal airport in 1942, and then toward engineering education when Brevard Engineering College opened in 1958.

The 129-building station was commissioned on October 20, 1942 and closed on February 15, 1946, and more than 2,200 pilots trained there in Grumman Wildcat and Hellcat fighters; the site is now run by the City of Melbourne Airport Authority (Naval Air Station Melbourne marker). After the war, the Cape Canaveral missile program and then the moon program set off a population boom across the county (Brevard County Historical Commission).

Brevard Engineering College held its first classes in September 1958, and in 1966 the Florida Secretary of State approved its new name, Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech News). The state marker for the university records the 37-cent donation that started it and its first honorary doctorate, given to astronaut Gus Grissom in 1962 (Florida Institute of Technology marker). In December 1965 the college announced plans to offer the first undergraduate degree program in computer science in the United States (Florida Tech News). NASA records that Julius Montgomery, hired as an electronics technician at Cape Canaveral in 1956, signed up for classes in 1958 and became the first African American student to integrate the college (NASA).

The Melbourne guides for this era are the Naval Air Station Melbourne guide, the Radiation, Inc. guide, the Space Coast aerospace arrival guide, the Julius Montgomery and Countdown College guide, the first computer science degree guide, the Adams brothers 16-bit computer guide, the Brevard Engineering College pre-stewardess program guide, and the Stone High School guide.

Melbourne history can be seen at the Rossetter House Museum in Eau Gallie, at six locally designated historic resources and a historic district, at two city cemeteries and at state markers from Ballard Park to Harbor City Blvd.

Since 2006 the City of Melbourne has locally designated six historic resources and one historic district that holds 12 more contributing resources, and owners need a Certificate of Appropriateness, at no cost, before a building permit for exterior work (City of Melbourne historic preservation). The list includes the Sea Lounge at 105 East Avenue B and the Rossetter House, which the city lists at 1328 Houston Street and 1365 Highland Avenue (City of Melbourne), while the museum itself gives 1320 Highland Ave and phone 321-254-9855 (Rossetter House Museum); the museum address is the one to use for a visit. Community Development handles designation questions at 321-608-7500 (City of Melbourne).

The city cemetery office works by appointment only, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, at 2895 Harper Rd., phone 321-608-7470 (City of Melbourne cemeteries). A name trap is worth knowing: the Original Melbourne Village Hall marker at 6100 Hall Rd. belongs to the Town of Melbourne Village, a separate town that kept its offices in the hall from 1957 until 1963 (Melbourne Village Hall marker). The Melbourne historical markers guide and the historic cemeteries guide list the sites in full. Last verified: October 14, 2026, on the City of Melbourne historic preservation and cemeteries pages.