Cocoa Beach incorporated in 1925. The astronauts arrived 37 years later. The surfers showed up first.

Gus Edwards bought most of the barrier island in 1924 and platted it as Cocoa Beach. The city incorporated June 5, 1925. For the next three decades it was a small beach community with a fishing pier, some seasonal tourists, and not much else. Then NASA arrived on Merritt Island in 1962, and Cocoa Beach became the town where the Mercury program went after hours. Then Kelly Slater was born at Brevard Hospital in 1972 and learned to surf at the Cocoa Beach Pier. Two things this city is genuinely famous for. Both of them are documented here.

What this site covers

The Gus Edwards land purchase and the 1925 incorporation. The mid-century motel district built for tourist and launch-worker traffic along A1A. The Mercury Seven and the social life of the early astronaut corps in Cocoa Beach, the Holiday Inn on the beach road, Bernard's Surf, the Mai Tiki Bar. The Cocoa Beach Pier, built in 1962, rebuilt after the 1996 fire, and rebuilt again. Kelly Slater and the East Coast surf scene that produced him, the ESA junior circuit, the Ron Jon Surf Shop that started as a single storefront in 1959. The post-Apollo population decline and the mid-century architecture that survived it. The barrier-island ecology, the sea-turtle nesting program, and the beach renourishment projects that have reshaped the shoreline since the 1990s.

Cocoa Beach is not a footnote to Kennedy Space Center. The barrier island has its own century of history that predates the rockets, and a surf culture that developed in parallel with the space program, not because of it. This site covers both threads, separately and where they intersect.

Corrections welcome at hello@oldcocoabeach.com. We log every correction with a date and updated citation.