Cocoa history

The first families arrived in Cocoa around 1860, the settlement was platted in 1882 as Indian River City, and by 1884 the name Cocoa had stuck (City of Cocoa History and Culture page).

The City of Cocoa history page says the town was founded by fishermen, that a post office opened at Magnolia Point two miles north, and that the first commercial building in Cocoa went up in 1881 or 1882 (City of Cocoa History and Culture page). In 1882 the first plats of the settlement were drawn under the name Indian River City on land owned by Captain R. A. Hardee, but U.S. postal authorities rejected that name as too long for a postmark (City of Cocoa History and Culture page). The 2018 Cocoa CRA plan adds that the area was settled in the 1860s and known as Scrub City, Magnolia Point, before that platting (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

Nobody agrees on why the town is called Cocoa. In 1925 the Cocoa Tribune printed several reader accounts: one credited Captain R.C. May with proposing the name at an 1884 town meeting because of its association with the cocoa plant; another said an old woman was inspired by a box of Baker's Cocoa; a third told of a woman on the Indian River bank who served hot cocoa to passing sailors (City of Cocoa History and Culture page). The city's own conclusion is that, whatever the origin, by 1884 the name Cocoa had become permanently associated with the young settlement (City of Cocoa History and Culture page).

Cocoa was incorporated in 1895, after a fire destroyed the business district in 1890 and just as the Great Freeze of 1894-1895 wiped out the citrus crop (City of Cocoa History and Culture page).

The railroad was the turning point between those two blows. The city history page says the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indian River Railway reached Cocoa in the early 1890s and acted as a catalyst for growth (City of Cocoa History and Culture page), while the 2018 CRA plan dates the arrival of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway in Cocoa to 1896 and says it quickly replaced the steamboat as the main way to move goods (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

The freeze hit hard. The city history page says it forced many people in the citrus trade to find new work and that, according to one source, the population of Cocoa had dropped to 382 by 1903 (City of Cocoa History and Culture page). The 2018 CRA plan says Cocoa growers recovered to earlier production levels by the 1910s (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

The two City of Cocoa documents disagree on the 1940 and 1960 counts, as the table shows; this guide reports both and does not pick one (City of Cocoa History and Culture page; 2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

Cocoa grew as a citrus and farm shipping town on the Indian River, and by the 1920s it had the fifth largest number of packing houses in Florida (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

The 2018 CRA plan describes early Cocoa as an agricultural area with over 20,000 citrus trees, where farmers grew oranges, lemons, pineapples, bananas and cane syrup, and where steamships drew ice plants, packing houses and canneries to the riverfront (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). Cocoa became the headquarters of the Florida Citrus Exchange, a cooperative for packing, shipping and marketing local citrus, and it held a three-day Orange Festival with races on Cocoa Beach and a ball at the New Indian River Hotel (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

The river was also a barrier. Until a 5,840-foot bridge with a drawbridge spanned the Indian River by 1917, private boats were the only way from Cocoa to Merritt Island, and the road on to the beach was finished in 1923 (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). The Porcher House marker tells the same river story from a grower's side: Edward Postell Porcher's packinghouse on the river bank behind his Cocoa home processed produce boated over from the family's groves on Merritt Island (Florida historical marker for the Porcher House). The Porcher House guide covers that house in detail.

Business on the river ran by boat too. The S.F. Travis Company, founded in 1885 and called by its marker the oldest continuously operating business in the city of Cocoa, made deliveries up and down the Indian River from a dock behind the store until the 1950s, when the dock was removed and the shoreline filled for the Cocoa River Development project (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker list for Brevard County).

Cocoa boomed in the 1920s, with growth packed around the riverfront, the railroad and the wharves, then lost both of its banks after 1929 (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update; City of Cocoa History and Culture page).

The 2018 CRA plan names the main streets of 1920s Cocoa as Brevard and Delannoy Avenues, Willard and Magnolia (now Stone) Streets, and King Street, which led to the city dock (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). Cocoa also became a real estate center: the Cocoa Drainage District, created in the 1920s between the St. Johns River and the railroad, drained land farther west (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). Cars changed the town too; the plan counts 749 registered cars in Brevard County in 1920 and about 6,000 by 1927, along with tourist auto camps and filling stations appearing in downtown Cocoa (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

The city history page says the economic collapse that began in 1929 brought a local decline and the failure of the two Cocoa banks (City of Cocoa History and Culture page). The Historic Cocoa Village guide covers the 1920s buildings that still stand downtown.

The space program at Cape Canaveral brought thousands of skilled jobs to the Cocoa area in the 1950s, along with quickly built housing and the first launch tourism (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update; City of Cocoa History and Culture page).

The 2018 CRA plan says facilities and housing in and around Cocoa were built quickly and without much planning, roads were widened toward Cape Canaveral, and citrus and the downtown population declined as the car came to dominate development (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). The city history page says thousands of visitors came to watch launches from Cape Canaveral, tying Cocoa to the tourist industry for the first time (City of Cocoa History and Culture page). Cocoa first approved its Council-Manager form of government in 1959, and the city says later changes to state statutes mirrored its plan (City of Cocoa City Council page).

Schools were still segregated then. The Historic Monroe Center marker says Monroe High School at 705 Blake Ave in Cocoa was built in 1954-55 as one of three segregated high schools in Brevard County and served Black children in grades 7 through 12 from throughout Central Brevard until 1966-67, when area public schools were integrated (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker list for Brevard County). The Harry T. Moore Center and Monroe Center guide tells that story in full.

The boom did not last. The 2018 plan says space funding cuts in the 1970s eliminated many jobs, and that the end of the Cold War and later the Space Shuttle program hit Cocoa and Brevard again (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

The Florida Division of Historical Resources lists Cocoa markers that reach from the Ais town of Ulumay to the 1950s Monroe High School (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker list for Brevard County).

Markers on the Cocoa Village buildings themselves are covered in the Historic Cocoa Village guide; the table lists the others.

The Hernandez Trail marker on U.S. 1 at King Street says the trail, used during the Seminole War, ran one half mile to the west and linked forts along the East Coast to Ft. Dallas in Miami and across to Ft. Brooke near Tampa (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker list for Brevard County). The Ulumay marker carries a Cocoa city listing but stands at 805 Sykes Creek Parkway at the entrance of the Ulumay Wildlife Sanctuary; it records that Spanish Lt. Alvaro Mexia mapped Ulumay Lagoon in 1605 and that Brevard County received the area from the State of Florida as a park in 1970 (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker list for Brevard County).

The St. Mark's marker in Cocoa notes that the church, still under construction on Christmas Eve 1886, was the site of the first Christmas tree seen in Cocoa Village, and that its tower bell, named Michael, was cast in New York in 1888 (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker list for Brevard County). The Historic Cocoa Village guide covers the downtown buildings as places to visit today.

Since the 1980s, downtown redevelopment through the Cocoa Community Redevelopment Agency, created in 1981, has shaped Cocoa, and the 2018 plan credits the preserved historic core of Cocoa Village for a downtown that fared better than others in the county (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

The 2018 plan says the City of Cocoa adopted a resolution on July 8, 1980 finding a necessity to redevelop blighted areas and created the redevelopment agency by Ordinance No. 10-81 on April 14, 1981 (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). The city history page puts the 1980 population at 16,096 (City of Cocoa History and Culture page). By the plan's account, Cocoa's downtown fared better than others in the county because of its preserved historic core, though the Great Recession stalled projects until recovery around 2014 (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update).

Two recent events shaped the riverfront. In the November 2014 general election, Cocoa voters approved a charter amendment, set up by Ordinance No. 18-2014, declaring Cocoa Riverfront Park a special scenic and recreational landmark of the city (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). In September 2017, Hurricane Irma wrecked the Cocoa waterfront infrastructure and flooded several streets, which led to the 2018 waterfront and CRA plan updates (2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update). The Community Redevelopment Agencies guide follows that work.

Last verified: October 21, 2026, by re-reading the City of Cocoa History and Culture and City Council pages, the history chapter of the 2018 Cocoa CRA Plan Update, and the Florida Division of Historical Resources marker texts for Brevard County and the Porcher House.