Malabar History — Malabar, Florida

Malabar appears in census schedules from 1880 onward, gained a Catholic mission church in 1911 and a deeded railroad-side burial ground in 1915, and voted to incorporate on December 1, 1962 (Town of Malabar mayor list).

The Town of Malabar, whose Town Hall is at 2725 Malabar Road, keeps a Town History section on its website with census pages, a cemeteries page and a list of mayors (Town History). Those documents, the town charter and Census Bureau counts are the record this page draws on. The Census Bureau place tables cited here for Malabar begin in 2000, so the early story is told through household schedules, not totals.

The 1880 and 1885 schedules the Town of Malabar has transcribed show stock raisers, hunters, fruit growers and mail carriers born in places from the Carolinas and Georgia to Wisconsin, Denmark and the Azores (1880 Census Spreadsheet).

In the 1880 transcription, the Malabar households include stock raisers and stock herders, hunters, a fruit grower born in Denmark, a laborer born in the Azores, a school teacher, a sailor and men who worked a saw mill (Town of Malabar 1880 census). One son in a Malabar household is listed as police of Port Capron and several men are listed as U.S. mail carriers. A clerk of the county court also appears in the Malabar listing.

The 1885 Florida census reads differently. The town's 1885 spreadsheet lists many fruit growers and their households, with carpenters, a minister, a musician, an artist and a machinist, and birthplaces running to New York, Illinois, New Hampshire, Kansas, Vermont and Massachusetts (1885 Census Spreadsheet). The same 1885 Malabar sheet records each resident's father's and mother's birthplace alongside their own.

The Censuses of Malabar index lists transcriptions for 1880, 1885, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1935, 1940, 1945 and 1950, so the series spans seventy years of the settlement before incorporation (Censuses of Malabar). The schedules are household rosters: they name residents line by line but publish no town totals, so this page describes who appears in them rather than adding up a population that the source does not state.

By 1900 the Malabar schedule is a farming roll of farmers and farm laborers, and by 1950 it records households along US Highway #1 and Florida Highway 514 with a postmaster, star route carrier, log sawyers and poultry farmers (1950 Census Spreadsheet).

The 1900 Malabar transcription adds columns that the 1880 form lacked, including immigration year, years in the United States and whether a house was owned free or mortgaged (1900 Census Spreadsheet). Its Malabar occupations are farmers and farm laborers, with a day laborer and a fisherman.

The 1950 Malabar spreadsheet names the street for each household. Enumerated households sit on US Highway #1, on Florida Highway 514, on Valkaria Road, on Malabar Farm Road, on Marshall's Mill Rd. and on roads entered only as roads to the north or south of 514 (1950 Census Spreadsheet). A postmaster employed by the U S Post Office Dept and a star route carrier with the U S Postal Dept appear in the 1950 Malabar listing, alongside log sawyers, a saw mill operator, poultry farmers and truck drivers.

The Town of Malabar counts four known cemeteries: the Old Mission cemetery of St John's Catholic Church, the Malabar (White) and Piney Grove (Black) cemeteries beside the railroad, and an abandoned First Christian Church cemetery on Malabar Road (Town of Malabar Cemeteries).

St John's Catholic Church was built in 1911 by the Florida Indian River Catholic Colony Land Company for settlers of that colony, on a 1-acre parcel at the west end of Old Mission Rd near I-95 in Malabar (Cemeteries report, page 1). The site lay on the 1830s Hernandez-Capron Trail between Ft Pierce and St Augustine. It was a mission church: the first priest assigned to St John's, in 1913, rode from Ft Pierce once a month. Around 1915 the church was abandoned and its congregation moved to St Joseph Catholic Church on Miller St, just south of Palm Bay Rd (Cemeteries report, page 2).

Two Malabar burial grounds sit north of Malabar Road on either side of the Florida East Coast Railroad tracks. The Malabar (White) Cemetery, on the east side, was deeded as a burying ground on March 24, 1915, and has no public right-of-way access (Cemeteries report, page 2). The Piney Grove (Black) Cemetery, on the west side, stood beside Piney Grove Baptist Church, which burned down in the 1950s; the town is still investigating its exact location near Mary St and West Railroad Ave (Cemeteries report, page 3).

The fourth Malabar cemetery is known from a single document. It stood by the First Christian Church on the north side of Malabar Road near Marshall Ln, and the only reference to it is a 1981 hand-drawn map of 1920s residences; the people buried there are unknown (Cemeteries report, page 4). The report closes with the name of the Town of Malabar Mayor and the date 9 September 2024 (Cemeteries report, page 5).

Malabar incorporated by a vote of 108 to 11 on December 1, 1962, and the same election chose the first Malabar mayor by 63 votes to 22 (Town of Malabar mayor list).

The winner of that race, S.B. Brown, took office on December 19, 1962, and he and John Moeller traded the Malabar mayor's office through the 1960s, according to the town's mayor list. The Malabar council later moved town elections from February to November to coincide with the county, and the first November election date on the list is November 4, 1969. A 1995 charter change set a three-year mayoral term for 1997 to 2000 and a four-year term starting in 2000 (Mayor list).

The charter now in force in Malabar was adopted in a referendum on November 5, 1985, and by Ordinance 2-04-86 on March 4, 1986, then readopted on March 25, 2003 (Town of Malabar Charter). Its preamble says residents want to keep the rural residential quality of life in the town and worry about uncontrolled growth. A November 8, 2016 referendum created single district voting, so each of the five Malabar council seats is elected by one district.

Census counts show Malabar growing from 2,622 residents in 2000 to 2,757 in 2010 and 2,949 in 2020, while the town set aside greenway land in the 1990s and became a Florida Trail Town in 2018 (Census 2020).

The 2020 count also recorded 1,359 housing units in Malabar (Census 2020 DHC H1). Growth from 2,622 to 2,949 Malabar residents over twenty years is an increase of 327 people (2,949 minus 2,622).

The Town of Malabar's Florida Communities Trust properties, first identified as Greenway I and Greenway II, were acquired in 1995 and 1996 (Trails and Greenways Committee agenda, January 12, 2026). The same packet takes them up under its Cameron Preserve item and describes the 100-acre Cameron Preserve as purchased through the Florida Communities Trust Preservation 2000 Program and bisecting the Malabar Scrub Sanctuary, with trails to both MSS East and MSS West. The FDEP Office of Greenways and Trails records that Malabar was designated a Trail Town in 2018 for its work on walking, bicycling and paddling trails (FDEP story map).