Category:Brevard County

Brevard County Seal

Brevard County Logo

Brevard County is located on Central Florida's East Coast. It is bounded by the St. Johns River plain on the west and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. Strongly influenced by the John F. Kennedy Space Center, Brevard County is also known as the Space Coast and was designated with the telephone area code 321, as in 3-2-1 liftoff.

In 1982, Brevard construction workers at Windover Farms uncovered a human burial ground over 8000yrs old.^[1] The Florida Legislature established Brevard County in 1854. The county is named after Theodore Washington Brevard, an early Florida settler and state comptroller.^[2] The official county seat has been located in Titusville since 1894. In 1989, a secondary center of county administrative offices was built in Viera, to serve the more populous southern part of the county. As of the 2010 census, the population was 543,376, making it the 10th most populated county in Florida.^[3]

72 mile long Brevard County has a total area of 1,557 square miles (4,030 km2), of which 1,016 square miles (2,630 km2) is land and 541 square miles (1,400 km2) (34.8%) is water.^[4] Most of the water is the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Johns River and the Indian River Lagoon.

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is the nation's navigational channel through the Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River in Brevard County. Dredging for the 10-12ft deep Intracoastal Waterway created 41 spoil islands in the Brevard portion of the Indian River.^[5]

Brevard County government has historically labeled the Atlantic beach areas differently; North Reach includes 9.4 miles (15.1 km) in Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach; Patrick Air Force Base beach is 4.1 miles (6.6 km); Mid Reach includes the 7.6 miles (12.2 km) in Satellite Beach; South Reach includes the 3.8 miles (6.1 km) in Indialantic and Melbourne Beach; South Beaches includes 14.5 miles (23.3 km) south of Melbourne Beach to Sebastian.^[6]

There are 250 square miles (650 km2) of federally protected wildlife refuges in Brevard County. These lands include Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Canaveral National Seashore, St. Johns National Wildlife Refuge, Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, St. Johns River Water Management District conservation areas, Brevard's Environmentally Endangered Lands Program Sanctuaries, and State of Florida preserves. Mosquito Lagoon and the St. Johns River are designated as Outstanding Florida Waters.

Containing 71% of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary, and almost 50% of it's length^[7], Brevard County is home to the entire Banana River, most of the Mosquito Lagoon, and the North and Central zones of the Indian River. On November 8th, 2016 Brevard County residents voted to collect a .5% sales tax to fund it's Save Our Indian River Lagoon restoration program.

Click an arrow below to view the pages in each Brevard County category.