Brevard County, Florida · est. 1925
The barrier island that built the East Coast surf capital and housed the Mercury 7.
Cocoa Beach is a one-mile-wide strip of sand between the Banana River and the Atlantic. In 1925 it had a charter and a few cottages. By 1963 it had Ron Jon, the Cocoa Beach Pier, the Holiday Inn where John Glenn drank coffee, and a population growing 1,000% a decade. Kelly Slater would be born here nine years later.
Old Cocoa Beach is a primary-source history of the town. The founding, the freed-slave settlers who got here first, the Apollo crowd that filled every motel from Daytona to Vero, the pier fire, the hurricanes, the surf. Built from Florida Memory, NASA history, NOAA, and city records, not the SEO recycling that turns up everywhere else.
The 25 pieces
Primary-source histories of the people, places, and decades that built Cocoa Beach. Start anywhere; the archive doesn't read in order.
- Culture
Cocoa Beach culinary history: Bernard's Surf, the Mai Tiki Bar, the long-gone places
Where the astronauts ate, where the Apollo crowd drank, and what's left of the 1960s Cocoa Beach restaurant scene. Bernard's Surf, Ramon's, the Mousetrap, the Mai Tiki Bar, and the half-dozen successors that still trade on the legacy.
- Surf
Kelly Slater: born 1972, grew up in Cocoa Beach, eleven world titles
Robert Kelly Slater was born February 11, 1972, in Cocoa Beach. By 2026 he had won the World Surf League championship eleven times, the most in surfing history. A documentary biography of the most successful competitive surfer on record.
- Editorial
Why Cocoa Beach worked, the editorial premise
What made Cocoa Beach into what it became, when most barrier-island Florida towns of the same vintage faded or never grew at all. A 1,200-word editorial argument about geography, timing, and one Department of Defense decision.
- Storms
The 2017 Hurricane Irma evacuation of Cocoa Beach
Hurricane Irma triggered one of the largest evacuations in Florida history. Brevard County, including Cocoa Beach, was under mandatory evacuation orders for several days in September 2017. A documented account of what happened on the barrier strip.
- Astronauts
The Astronaut Memorial Foundation, founded after Challenger
The Astronaut Memorial Foundation was founded in 1986 after the Challenger disaster. The Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center is its single most visible work. A history of the foundation and the memorial.
- Architecture
Mid-century motel architecture in Cocoa Beach: what's left of the Cocoa Beach Modern
A field survey of the surviving mid-century-modern motel architecture in Cocoa Beach. Cinder block, jalousie windows, kidney pools, and neon. What was the Cocoa Beach Modern style, where you can still see it, and what's been demolished.
What this site is
Cocoa Beach has been written about a thousand times. Most of those pieces recycle the same five facts (Ron Jon, Kelly Slater, the pier, the astronauts, Bernard's Surf) without ever opening a city charter, a Florida Memory archive box, or a NOAA storm report. We open them.
Every article here is sourced. Where the source is reachable online, we link it. Where the claim is local oral tradition and the documentary record doesn't confirm it, we say so plainly. The author byline is the brand: there is no personal voice trying to sell you a course. Just a working history of the barrier island.
Common questions about Cocoa Beach history
- When was Cocoa Beach founded?
The town incorporated on June 5, 1925, on a sand barrier between the Banana River and the Atlantic. Cocoa city attorney Gus C. Edwards had bought the entire tract two years earlier from a Brevard County tax sale, platted it, and sold lots. Settlement on the island goes back further: freed Black families bought land here in the 1880s, before there was anything anyone called a town.
- Why did the Mercury 7 astronauts live in Cocoa Beach?
Patrick Air Force Base and the Cape Canaveral launch complex sat right next door. NASA's earliest astronauts trained and worked at the Cape, and Cocoa Beach was the closest town with motels, restaurants, and bars. The Holiday Inn (Henri Landwirth, manager) and the Cape Colony Inn became unofficial astronaut headquarters in 1961–63.
- Is Cocoa Beach really the East Coast surf capital?
The Eastern Surfing Association (founded 1967, headquartered nearby) certifies it as the East Coast competitive surfing center. Kelly Slater, 11-time world champion, grew up here. Ron Jon Surf Shop, the largest surf shop on Earth by floor area, opened its Cocoa Beach store in 1963 and still operates 24 hours a day.
- When was the Cocoa Beach Pier built?
The pier opened in 1962 as a wooden fishing and entertainment pier built by Richard Stottler. It extends 800 feet into the Atlantic. It has burned, been damaged by hurricanes, and been rebuilt; the present operator is Westgate Resorts, which acquired it in 2014.