Town History — Grant-Valkaria, Florida

The Ais were the first people in the Grant-Valkaria area, and after they disappeared only a handful of settler families lived along this stretch of the Indian River Lagoon until the late 1880s.

The Town of Grant-Valkaria history page says the first settlers of the Grant-Valkaria area were the Ais Indians, and points to shell mounds near the Indian River Lagoon, a water the town says was first called the River Ais, as evidence of their use of clams, oysters, mullet, turtle eggs and turtles (Town of Grant-Valkaria history). The same page states that disease brought by the Spaniards led to their disappearance from the area, and that until the late 1880s only four families of non-native Americans lived in the immediate Grant-Valkaria area.

The National Park Service record for Jorgensen's General Store in Grant gives an earlier start for permanent settlement: Louis K. Smith and his family arrived in 1880 as the first white settlers in the Grant area, and the first one room school house followed in 1884 (National Register nomination, page 9). In 1886 early settler John M. Samuels bought the tract that now makes up a large portion of Grant (National Register nomination, page 5). The town's own account dates Grant's first house, built by Louis Kossuth Smith, to 1894 and its first school house to 1893, so the two official sources disagree on these early dates.

Valkaria takes its name from Valkyries, the name 1886 settler Ernest Svedelius gave the land north of Grant, which post office errors turned into Valkaria; Grant became a postal town on August 4, 1891.

According to the Town of Grant-Valkaria, Mr. Ernest Svedelius settled in 1886 in the area immediately to the north of what would become Grant and named it Valkyries, and post office errors changed the name to Valkaria (Town of Grant-Valkaria history). The Valkaria post office was established in 1890 with Edward Cecil as postmaster, and the Grant post office opened on August 4, 1891 with Edwin Nelson as postmaster. No fetched source records where Svedelius came from, so the origin of the settlers is not stated here.

The National Register nomination adds that Grant was founded in 1891 and that its first post office ran out of Edwin Nelson's home (National Register nomination, page 9). Mail later moved into the trading post that Louis Bensen built between 1892 and 1894, where he served as postmaster and storekeeper from May 1894 to July 1896 (National Register nomination, page 10). That First Street building was erected in 1894 and served as a trading post, post office, telegraph office and railroad express office (National Register nomination, page 5). Carrie Jorgensen, one of the Jorgensen family members who held the postmaster job until 1956, is described in the nomination as the railroad express agent and the first female telegrapher on the east coast (National Register nomination, page 10).

Grant grew as a fishing and farming settlement on the Indian River Lagoon, leaned harder on fishing after the freeze of 1894 and 1895 hit its pineapples, and later saw a large cattle ranch run from a ranch house in Valkaria.

In December of 1892 the population of Grant doubled when 3 families totaling 16 new residents got off the steamboat to stay (Town of Grant-Valkaria history). The National Park Service nomination lists fishing, farming, orange groves and pineapple plantations as Grant's main industries in the 1890s, and says that after the Big Freeze of 1894 and 1895, Grant residents relied mainly on the fishing industry to supplement their agricultural income (National Register nomination, page 9). In 1924 a tram road ran from the railroad past the general store to the Jorgensen Fish House on the river (National Register nomination, page 5).

The town history credits Danish settlers with much of that trade. In the late 1800s, seventy-five Danish families settled between Vero Beach and Fort Pierce, some of them in the Grant-Valkaria area, and they formed cooperatives that shipped fish, oysters, clams, crabs, farm produce, citrus and pineapples (Town of Grant-Valkaria history). The Jorgensen, Christenson, Gutermuth and Bensen family names are still common in Grant-Valkaria, and the Bensen family's 1916 home on U.S. 1 is now the Grant Historical House museum.

Inland, W.L. Graddik settled in 1895 and eventually owned 75,000 acres of fenced pasture from west of Palm Bay into South Brevard, with his ranch house in Valkaria; the town says his cattle went to feed U.S. troops in World War II. From at least 1930, Couch Manufacturing Company built marine engines, pumps and dredges in Grant-Valkaria, and the town credits Roy Couch with a role in dredging Sebastian Inlet. The old Couch Pump site is now Christenson's Landing, a large boat ramp (Town of Grant-Valkaria history).

The railroad reached Grant in the 1890s, the 1929 arrival of U.S. 1 turned the front of the Grant store toward the Indian River, and by 1959 the freight station had closed and the post office had left the store.

The town history places the first train stop in Grant around November of 1893, when the Grant Station was built, and shows both Grant and Valkaria as stops on Flagler's East Coast Railway around 1912 (Town of Grant-Valkaria history). The National Register nomination dates railroad service in the area to 1890 instead (National Register nomination, page 9). It also describes the Dixie Highway, later U.S. 1, as one of the most important Brevard County events of the 1910s, running through every community on the west bank of the Indian River. Grant, Malabar, Micco and Sebastian all saw more activity in the land boom that peaked in 1925, and Grant leaders stimulated interest in a bridge across the Indian River that the 1926 collapse of the boom left uncompleted.

Before U.S. 1 was built in 1929, the Grant store's entrance faced west toward the railroad and county road; with the new highway, the front moved to the east side facing the Indian River (National Register nomination, page 5). After the Florida East Coast Railroad ended passenger service, the tracks were removed and the Grant train station was barged across the river, while the Grant freight station kept operating until 1956 (National Register nomination, page 5). Postal functions left the Grant store in 1959 (National Register nomination, page 9). The store, now Grant Grocery at 5390 U.S. 1, is on the National Register of Historic Places as Jorgensen's General Store, National Register Information System ID 99000711 (NPGallery record 99000711).

Grant stayed small through these decades. The 1999 nomination counts 250 residents in 1965, 400 in 1989 and about 1,000 at the time it was written, and notes that one February weekend each year the Grant Seafood Festival swells the crowd to about 80,000 (National Register nomination, page 10).

Residents of Grant and Valkaria incorporated in 2006 to control growth and keep the area rural, after a two-year campaign that produced a charter passed by the Legislature as Chapter 2006-348 and approved by voters on July 25, 2006.

The Town of Grant-Valkaria says that in 2004, after many years of trying to convince Brevard County government and the neighboring City of Palm Bay to encourage growth compatible with the rural character of the unincorporated communities of Grant and Valkaria, a group of residents set out to incorporate (Town of Grant-Valkaria history). A Grant-Valkaria Preservation Committee steered a feasibility study and a charter drafted by its members and 20 to 30 residents who met weekly.

The bill, HB 1297, passed the Florida Senate 39 to 0, and the Governor approved it on June 14, 2006 as Chapter 2006-348 (Florida Senate, HB 1297 bill history). The enrolled act made the town's creation effective on approval by the electors at the August 1, 2006 special election, and its final section calls for a referendum on or before August 1, 2006 (enrolled HB 1297); the Brevard County Supervisor of Elections records the Grant-Valkaria incorporation special election on July 25, 2006, when 1,149 voters said yes and 591 said no, with 1,741 of 2,436 registered voters taking part (Supervisor of Elections, 2006 incorporation election). The town's own page gives June 15 and July 26, 2006 for the signing and the vote, so this page follows the state and county records.

The Grant-Valkaria charter writes the reason for incorporation into law. Its preamble says the people of the town ratified the charter to secure self-government, preserve the town's history, protect its future, maintain a rural quality of life, and foster responsible, community-controlled growth (Charter of the Town of Grant-Valkaria). Section 9 describes the rural character as the foundation on which the town was formed, lists low development intensity and an abundance of agricultural land among its elements, and requires the council to notify property owners in the town within 1,500 feet of a proposed increase in development intensity, with an affirmative vote of six or more council members needed to enact it. The act also gave residents the chance to select the town name, with the elected council to set procedures within 6 months after its first meeting.

Grant-Valkaria has grown since incorporation. The 2010 Census counted 3,850 residents in Grant-Valkaria town (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census P1), and the 2020 Census counted 4,509 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census P1), an increase of 659 people, or about 17 percent, over the decade (4,509 minus 3,850 is 659; 659 divided by 3,850 is 0.171).