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.
Melbourne and Eau Gallie were separate towns for most of a century. Melbourne was incorporated in 1888 and Eau Gallie platted in 1884, and both reincorporated as cities in the 1920s, Melbourne in 1923 and Eau Gallie in 1925, according to the 2016 National Register nomination for Green Gables. In 1969, the 1997 nomination for the William H. Gleason House records, “Eau Gallie was incorporated into Melbourne.”
Two towns of equal size
The space program made the two towns big at the same time. A 1966 study done for NASA by Florida State University reprinted the populations of the county’s towns from the Statistical Abstract of Florida:
| Town | 1940 | 1950 | 1960 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eau Gallie | 873 | 1,554 | 12,300 |
| Melbourne | 2,622 | 4,223 | 11,982 |
By 1960, then, Eau Gallie was slightly the larger of the two. The study described Eau Gallie and Melbourne together as the center of the southern county, with Melbourne Village and West Melbourne almost surrounded by them.
”Fragmentation of political authority”
The same study thought the arrangement was costly. “Although possessing the largest population concentration in the county,” it said of the southern complex, “the fragmentation of political authority among the separate cities inhibits the coordination of functional and intergovernmental cooperation.” Its example was the insistence of Melbourne and Eau Gallie on building separate water plants, close together, on Lake Washington. During one water shortage, residents of both cities were asked to confine lawn sprinkling to the hours between 9 p.m. and midnight. In February 1964, the study noted, Eau Gallie refused to provide water and sewer service to a low-cost housing project outside its limits. The State Board of Health called the refusal unreasonable, and the matter was settled when the housing authority paid for pressure mains into the city’s lines, at rates 50 percent higher than inside the city.
One city
After the merger, the 1970 census counted 40,236 people in the City of Melbourne, more than three times its 1960 count. Eau Gallie’s old downtown and its houses, Gleason’s and James Rossetter’s among them, are now in Melbourne, and Eau Gallie’s own story is on our Eau Gallie page.
Further Reading
- Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon
Sources
- Annie Mary Hartsfield, Mary Alice Griffin and Charles M. Grigg, eds., Summary Report: NASA Impact on Brevard County (Florida State University, 1966), NASA Technical Reports Server
- National Park Service, National Register Registration Form: William H. Gleason House, Melbourne (1997)
- National Park Service, National Register Registration Form: Green Gables, Melbourne (2016)
- U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population, Number of Inhabitants: Florida, Tables 6 and 7
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.