Melbourne Florida Since 1888
The working river that built Melbourne.
Freedmen settled at Crane Creek in 1867. The Town of Melbourne was incorporated in 1888, and in 1969 it took in Eau Gallie, the neighbor that had grown up beside it. This is the record of how that happened.
What's here
Crane Creek to the coast.
Articles on the city, the creek and Eau Gallie, from the primary record.
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Founding & Crane Creek
The freedmen who settled Crane Creek in 1867, the 1886 plat and the town's incorporation on December 22, 1888.
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Eau Gallie & the river trades
William Gleason's town, the 1893 railroad, and the fish, ice and Standard Oil business that ran on the river.
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The 1969 Eau Gallie merger
Two towns of almost the same size, two water plants on one lake, and one city after 1969.
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Florida Tech
Brevard Engineering College, which began in 1958 with evening classes for missile-range engineers in three rented rooms.
Recent
From the archive.
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Editorial
What 'Old Melbourne' means
What this site covers: Melbourne and Eau Gallie from the freedmen who settled on Crane Creek in 1867 and the 1888 town charter, through the railroad, the river trades and the space-age boom, to the 1969 consolidation of the two cities.
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Neighborhoods
Front Street, the 1919 fire and the move to New Haven Avenue
Melbourne's first business district grew up north of Crane Creek along Front Street in the 1890s. A 1919 fire destroyed the commercial district along First Street, and by 1923 a new downtown was rising along Melbourne and New Haven Avenues, with auto businesses along the Dixie Highway.
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Weather
Frances and Jeanne in Melbourne, September 2004
Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne came ashore at the same spot on Hutchinson Island three weeks apart in September 2004. Jeanne's strongest sustained wind measured anywhere, 79 knots, was recorded at the National Weather Service office in Melbourne.
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Waterfront
Fish, ice and the railroad: Melbourne and Eau Gallie's working river, 1890s to 1920s
After the 1894-95 freezes, commercial fishing helped carry Melbourne and Eau Gallie. The railroad shipped fish north packed in ice; James W. Rossetter ran an Indian River fish company out of Eau Gallie from 1902; and Florida Power and Light built an ice plant on the Dixie Highway in the 1920s to serve the fishing fleet and the growers.
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Founding
William H. Gleason: the Reconstruction lieutenant governor who built Eau Gallie
William H. Gleason became Florida's first elected lieutenant governor in 1868, was ruled out of office by the state Supreme Court in 1869, and spent the rest of his life developing land. He bought 16,000 acres on the Indian River in 1870, platted Eau Gallie in 1884, and died there in 1902.
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Environment
The Indian River Lagoon at Melbourne: the 2011 blooms and after
In 2011 the Indian River Lagoon had two algal blooms at once, and the line between them ran through Eau Gallie: the record superbloom to the north and a lesser bloom from Eau Gallie south past Melbourne. Seagrass loss followed, and later the manatee die-off and the county's lagoon tax.
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Infrastructure
The railroad reaches Eau Gallie and Melbourne, 1893
Henry Flagler's railway reached Eau Gallie on May 20, 1893, and its first engine arrived on June 24; a ticket from Jacksonville cost $7. Eau Gallie was the end of the line for a time, and the tracks reached Melbourne months later.
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Institutions
Florida Tech's start: Brevard Engineering College, 1958
Florida Institute of Technology began in 1958 as Brevard Engineering College, the idea of Jerome P. Keuper, an RCA physicist on the Cape's missile range. Its first evening classes for missile-range engineers were held in rented rooms at Eau Gallie Junior High, starting September 22, 1958.
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Merger
The 1969 Melbourne-Eau Gallie merger
Melbourne and Eau Gallie grew side by side for eighty years and, by 1960, were nearly the same size. A 1966 study for NASA singled out their separate water plants on Lake Washington as an example of a divided county. In 1969 Eau Gallie was consolidated into Melbourne.
Common questions about Melbourne history
- Why is Melbourne, Florida, named after a city in Australia?
The town was named for its first postmaster, Cornthwaite John Hector, an Englishman who, according to the 2016 National Register nomination for Melbourne's Green Gables, was "said to have come from Melbourne, Australia." The same nomination notes that other sources say he came from New Zealand. Before the name, the settlement was Crane Creek, and its first settlers were freedmen who came in 1867.
- When was Melbourne incorporated?
The Town of Melbourne was incorporated on December 22, 1888, two years after William Camp filed the first plat of the town. It reincorporated as a city in 1923. Both dates come from the Green Gables nomination.
- When did Melbourne and Eau Gallie merge?
In 1969, when, in the words of the National Register nomination for the William H. Gleason House, "Eau Gallie was incorporated into Melbourne." The two had grown to almost the same size: 12,300 people in Eau Gallie and 11,982 in Melbourne in 1960, by the figures a 1966 Florida State University study for NASA reprinted. That study held up the two cities' separate water plants on Lake Washington as the cost of divided government.
- When did the railroad reach Melbourne?
Henry Flagler's railway reached Eau Gallie on May 20, 1893, according to the historical marker at Highland Avenue and St. Clair Street, and its first engine arrived on June 24. Eau Gallie was the end of the line for a while; the tracks reached Melbourne a few months later.