Explore Historic Titusville Tours

Explore Historic Titusville is a free website and phone app published by the Titusville Historic Preservation Board with the Florida Division of Historical Resources and the State of Florida.

The project's about page describes self guided walking and driving tours that steer users to dozens of highlighted spots on an interactive GPS enabled map, with stories, historic images and narration at each location (Explore Historic Titusville about page). Story pages such as the Sams House story end with a location block (an address, and hours, admission, amenities and a phone where the story gives them) and name the related tour.

The City of Titusville lists the project on its own Historic Preservation Board page and calls it a resource that puts the city's history, people and memorable places at a reader's fingertips (City of Titusville Historic Preservation Board page). Questions about the board's agendas or bylaws go to 321-567-3778, and the Planning and Growth Management Department, the board's staff liaison, answers at 321-567-3860. The same city page posts the Joynerville Report for download.

Explore Historic Titusville lists four themed tours, one for each era of local history, and every tour page states its own stop count, route distance and driving time.

The driving times count the road only. The Native American tour page asks for several hours on the trails at Sams House and Indian Mound Station Sanctuary and at least 90 minutes in the county history museum (First 12,000 Years tour), while the modern city tour page points to time in the shops of the commercial district, the North Brevard Historical Museum and the Enchanted Forest Sanctuary trails (Growth of a Modern City tour). Three of the four tour pages, all but the space program tour, say restrooms and other visitor facilities are noted in the stop descriptions (Hub of Indian River Commerce tour).

The First 12,000 Years tour traces Native American life from the first Ice Age inhabitants to the arrival of European explorers and American settlers, using eight sites between the Indian River and the St. Johns River watershed.

The tour page explains why the stops are spread so widely: many sites of native settlement around Titusville are hidden by thick vegetation and changing water levels, and many burial mounds and shell middens were gradually destroyed (First 12,000 Years tour page). Its list runs from Sams House Nature Sanctuary and the Windover Archaeological Site to the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science, Fox Lake Park, Indian Mound Station Sanctuary, Seminole Rest, the Haulover Canal and the Old Brevard County Courthouse. The page says Indian Mound Station Sanctuary covers 147 acres of scrub, pine flatwoods and forested wetlands, entered from Parrish Road or the south side of Holder Park, and that the present Haulover Canal was dug in 1888 at a spot that mattered to native peoples long before. At the old courthouse, the stop recalls Tom Tiger, who sought compensation for a stolen horse and was the first of his people to take such a matter to a court of law.

Sams House, the first stop, sits at 6195 N. Tropical Trail on Merritt Island, with 2.8 miles of trails through palm hammock, mangrove forest and marsh, a short accessible Discovery Loop, and a burial mound near the parking lot that Clarence B. Moore partly excavated in 1895 (Sams House story, Explore Historic Titusville). The story lists trail hours of 7:00 am to 6:00 pm from October through April and 7:00 am to 8:00 pm from May through September, free admission, and a phone line of (321) 449-4720.

Windover is a stop to read, not to walk. The Windover story says excavations from 1982 to 1984 in the bottom of a small pond produced burials, textiles and cordage from the Archaic Period, 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, and that the National Park Service recognized the site as a National Historic Landmark in 1987 (Windover story, Explore Historic Titusville). The pond is now on private property in Titusville; the historic marker stands close to the street near Windover Way and Windover Trail, and the story warns that the opposite shoulder can be extremely wet and muddy.

The river commerce tour starts with pioneer sites on North Merritt Island and at LaGrange, then follows Titusville south from Sand Point along Washington Avenue to the blocks rebuilt after the fire of 1895.

Its stops read like a timeline of the river town (Hub of Indian River Commerce tour page). The LaGrange church standing today was built in 1894 in the Carpenter Gothic Revival style. Near the east end of Main Street, where the city dock stood, the Lund Line steamboat Pioneer burned to the waterline in 1877, and its hulk now lies under the modern street. Col. Henry T. Titus built the three story Titus House in 1870 as the first hotel on the Indian River; he died in 1881. A Connecticut fisherman, George W. Scobie, arrived by schooner in 1885 and started what became a large fishing fleet. Losley's Hotel and Saloon, a two story brick building, went up after the 1895 fire. In downtown Titusville, the tour page describes most visible storefronts as later than that fire, with panels and wall plaques marking the earlier sites along a walking loop of approximately 0.5 mile.

Two stops have a wider record. The National Register context form for Titusville says St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church was one of two churches built in 1886 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and that Joynerville, laid out in 1879, was the first area platted within the present corporate limits (Titusville Multiple Property Group form, National Register). The tour marks Joynerville at the Isaac Campbell Community Center and Park, which remembers the African American community long centered along South Street (tour page).

The Pritchard House closes the early tour, and the two city sources on it disagree. The Explore Historic Titusville story says Capt. James Pritchard built the Queen Anne house in 1891, that the family occupied it until 2003 when Brevard County bought it, and that it was listed on the National Register in 1980 and on the Titusville City Register of Historic Places (Pritchard House story). The city's Pritchard House page gives 2005 for the county purchase and says the North Brevard Heritage Foundation held the grand opening on May 1st 2011 (City of Titusville Pritchard House page).

The modern city tour has the longest stop list, 23 locations, from the commercial blocks rebuilt after 1900 to riverfront homes, the first airport, a citrus packing plant and a civil rights museum in Mims.

Every row comes from the stop descriptions on the Growth of a Modern City tour page, which also opens with the Titusville FEC Railroad Station and dates the city's start as a regular Florida East Coast stop to 1893. The National Register context form is more precise on the railroad, saying train service to Titusville began in January 1893 and the line took the Florida East Coast Railway name in 1895 (National Register context form).

Outside downtown, the same tour page describes the Addison-Ellis Canal, visible about 200 feet along the trail from the Enchanted Forest Sanctuary visitor center, where a 1911 consortium set out to buy 22,500 acres; the Carter House of around 1915, a Cracker vernacular bungalow; Arthur Dunn Airpark, set up as a county airport in 1927 on a 45 acre property leased as an emergency landing strip for the US Airmail; and the Nevins Fruit Company packing plant, whose packing floor covered 31,474 square feet (tour page). The last stop, listed as the Harry T. and Harriet V. Moore Cultural Center and Museum in Mims, is a 5,000 square foot facility on the former homesite of Brevard County civil rights martyrs Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore.

The Right Stuff tour links six aerospace sites and begins at Kennedy Point Park, chosen for its view across the Indian River to Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral.

The tour page frames the route as the story of military aviation and the space program near Titusville, covering every era from the earliest uncrewed launches to the Space Shuttle, with the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs in between (Right Stuff tour page). Space View Park, near the site of the original settlement of Titusville, is the stop that honors the teams behind those programs. The remaining stops are museums and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex; the page notes that entry to Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is restricted, so admission to the visitor complex and tours of the museum at Launch Complex 26 must be arranged in advance. This guide carries no hours or prices for those attractions; the tour page is the place to start.

The city's Titusville Welcome Center, at 419 South Hopkins Avenue and open Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 5pm, is the walk-in source for maps and trail information before a tour.

The city page for the Welcome Center lists trail information, maps and tips on nature stops, plus area guides and brochures (City of Titusville Welcome Center page). It also matters for the early tour: the Pritchard House story places parking and restrooms in the nearby Welcome Center, and gives the house itself an address of 424 S Washington Ave., hours of 9:00am to 6:00pm daily, an admission fee, group tours arranged in advance and the phone (321) 607-0203 (Pritchard House story). The city's own Pritchard House page instead says tours of the house are available by reservation at the same number (City of Titusville Pritchard House page), so a call ahead settles which applies on a given day.

Three more tips come straight from the Titusville tour material. The Sams House trails keep longer summer hours than winter hours (Sams House story). The Windover marker needs careful roadside parking (Windover story). And the modern city tour page itself suggests splitting its 23 stops into shorter segments rather than driving them all at once (Growth of a Modern City tour).

Last verified: October 21, 2026, after a fresh pass over all four Explore Historic Titusville tour pages, the about page, three of the Titusville story pages, the city's preservation board, Pritchard House and Welcome Center pages, and the National Register context form for Titusville.