I recently returned to Brevard County, Florida, one home of my childhood, with my own daughter. We did the obligatory visit to Kennedy Space Center, a place my own mother once worked, and wandered through the Challenger memorial, scrawled with images my own teachers had seen etched in the sky. The glossy (and expensive) entrance tickets protruding from my back pocket made me feel more like a tourist than the fourth-generation Florida native I was.
So, when my daughter fell asleep in the car before we had even exited the complex, I embraced the opportunity to return to some of my old, familiar haunts.
I turned onto Merritt Island’s main artery, called (in most places) Courtenay Parkway. It extends from its northern terminus at the Space Center to its southernmost point over 29 miles away, paralleling the Indian River to the west and the Banana River to the east. I had spent years of my youth on those miles, and despite some commercial development here and there, much of it looked the same.
I was heading to my old neighborhood, a product of the late ‘80s development boom in Florida. All along Courtenay, subdivisions branched off, with neatly boxed lots along neatly paved roads. Each appeared named by the Great Suburban Slot Machine, pairing some element of the environment (panther, oak, river, lake) with some nebulous measurement of space (run, trace, glade, crest). Of course, there was no crest of a river or trace of a panther anywhere.
As I approached my old subdivision, I noted, with some curiosity, its name: “New Georgianna Settlement.” The Slot Machine must have been broken that day. The only road in and out is Old Parsonage Drive, a name that suggests the kind of veneer of history the subdivision initially attempted: one home looks like an old Victorian, though Zillow shows it built in 1989. Another across the way looks vaguely like a 1920s farmhouse (built 1990). But it seems developers soon gave up on this faux quaintness, and the remaining homes show all the marks of the late twentieth century. A line of squat, stucco sandcastles, allergic to any curves.
I could not immediately recognize my childhood home, as its front yard had become obscured, buried beneath mounds of vegetation and middle class debris. As a child, I had been mostly attached to a row of spindly pines that lined the back fence, but from the road all I could see was the rough rise of the roof.
Unsatisfied with such an anticlimactic end to my suburbaning down memory lane (and with my daughter still fast asleep in the back), I decided to explore what I presumed was the next subdivision down. A quick right on Courtenay and then right again landed me on a narrow, curvy street, with no Slot Machine name in sight. I quickly realized how unfamiliar the road was. I had never left my subdivision as a kid.
Almost immediately, I looped around a white clapboard church rising dangerously close to the road. It was clear that the church was there first, and the blue historical marker confirmed my suspicion: this church was old, significantly older than the subdivision homes that surrounded it. My quick turn into its shell-filled parking lot didn’t wake my daughter. “Welcome to Georgianna United Methodist Church.”
Georgianna United Methodist Church. Photo by the author.
I guess I should call this “Old Georgianna Settlement” then. According to the marker, the church first held a service on Thanksgiving, 1886 and was still in operation. Within a stone’s throw, another sign described the railroad spur built to transport citrus and tourists from one river to the other. A third marker touted Provost’s Hall, a local community center dating to 1910.
I inched past the Hall to the first cross street: Old Settlement Road. My naming wasn’t far off! The one lane dirt path ambled past grove-sized lots and turn-of-the-century bungalows (Zillow confirmed several from 1901 and 1909), with long stretches of water visible between their porches. The ruts rocked my daughter into deeper sleep, and I was now keen for more of old Georgianna to explore.
Where there is an old church, there’s usually a cemetery, and if you’re lucky, its tablets of history will still be visible. So a Google search led me down the nearby (and curiously-named) Crooked Mile Road to the historic Georgianna Cemetery. I romped as best I could with an eye on the conked out child in the back, and found many of the graves as old as the bungalows. I read their abridged biographies of stone: born, died, mother, father, rest, peace.
Photo by the author
I began to piece together a new history of my subdivision. Its proximity to the church suggests that Old Parsonage Drive was not named that to add a nostalgic sheen but, in fact, was the site of the old Georgianna parsonage. The “New Georgianna Settlement” itself was likely built on the sold-off citrus groves of the historic town.
Amid the graves, these realizations stirred up a sadness in me. Almost a grief at what I had missed. As an adult, I chase down this kind of Florida history, yet, here it was in my literal backyard, and I had not seen it.
“I could have been here all along,” I thought. So I decided I would see better.
It was with different eyes that I turned right again on Courtenay and headed south once more, along a stretch I used to carpool down twice a day. At this point, the island narrows significantly, and the road abuts the Banana River so closely that only a few salty rocks form its shoulder.
But it was the scene to the right that had always captured my interest. From the road, the land shoots up sharply, rising to elevations of 35 feet in a very short space. I remembered childhood rumors about Don Knotts living on the ridge (a rumor I can’t confirm), but I had always been drawn to this cliff because it was so unusual. It’s true that Florida has some mild elevation inland, but certainly not on an intracoastal that can barely keep its head above water. Something more was up. I wanted to see what it could be.
I turned right once again and wound up to the top of what Google calls “Honeymoon Hill.”1 Childhood carpools had meant no detours, not even for Don Knots, so I had never been to the homes I had glimpsed from the road. Among the taller stucco sandcastles with larger boxed lots, I looked for visible clues to the land’s history. No churches, no cemeteries, no blue historical markers. Only an expansive view of both rivers and the small “Honeymoon Lake” below. Yet, from this peak, something began to feel familiar.
It felt exactly like a shell mound. I was no stranger to the surviving mounds (often called middens) of Florida’s other coast. Tribes like the Calusa and Tocobaga used them as trading outposts, religious centers, and important seats of power. At one time, hundreds of mounds dotted the Gulf, but most were razed to build roads and serve as fill. Only a few, including the Safety Harbor Mound and the Portavant Temple Mound, remain.
Google confirmed that the indigenous populations native to Brevard County, such as the Timucua and Ays, also built shell mounds. Some are still extant, like Turtle Mound to the north or recent ones unearthed to the south, off the tellingly-named Shell Pit Road. A 1924 photograph labeled “Shell Mound on Merritt Island” documents at least one mound in the area but offers few other clues. Google was silent on any indigenous history here.
D. Stuart Mossom. Shell mound on Merritt Island. 1924. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, accessed 7 October 2024.
The land itself, though, says a lot more. The aerial map reveals how geographically ideal this spot would have been for indigenous people: flanked by the rivers on both sides with access to the lake below, the peak provided an easy lookout, abundant sources of food, and ample opportunities for trade.
My subsequent research verified indigenous presence in the area. Brevard County’s official archivist, Michael Boonstra, shared with me via email that locals used to dig up bones, pottery, and shells. Archeologist Bob Gross added that at the turn of the century, one of the founders of Georgianna sold off some of the shell for roads, and the Indian River Anthropological Society excavated the property in the early ‘80s (a land dig to pair with a land boom). They found evidence of an indigenous burial mound, as well as an early settler cemetery. Gross thinks that Honeymoon Lake and Honeymoon Hill were first created from a meteorite and then that indigenous people built a midden on top.
Just as the sun was descending on my right, I arrived at the very southern tip of the island. My daughter awoke on the narrow drawbridge crossing the Banana River, her sleepy eyes unaware of how far we had come. I drove off the island and headed back up the coast, but then I pulled off to face west and catch the sunset. She picked up some of the shell gravel from the pull-off, and I surveyed where we had just been. I pointed to the rising mound in the distance. “See that?” I said. “History.”
