Jim - many thanks for creating this page. I have lots of books on Florida history and have in the last 10 years or so taken a particular interest in Brevard County history. I am sure you have read A Land Remembered as it is just an outstanding book. Patrick Smith also made a DVD in recent years called A Sense of Place. In it he describes his coming from Mississippi, but claiming Florida as his own by virtue of sense of place. Although I am an import to Florida/Brevard County I have adopted it as my own much like Patrick suggests. I moved here in 1984. I have many, many things that I have researched as I am the consummate Curious George when it comes to local history. One of the things that kept me busy for years was that square, U-shaped concrete structure just a few feet from shore in the river slightly north of the intersection of US1 and State Road 50. It is still there to this day. I remember asking people that grew up in the area and they said that it had always been there as long as they could remember. It sure looked like a structure to pull a boat into, but the water is only inches deep, so I ruled that out. After digging into it on and off for a few years I asked someone from the St. Johns River Water Management District about it. I was actually asking them some questions about the Addison Canal (another topic another day), but threw in the question about that structure. He believed it to be the remnants of a boat house as there were similar examples in Cocoa and Rockledge. I said that the water is too shallow, but he explained that they could dredge channels to deeper water. I then went to Cocoa and Rockledge and sure enough there was a very similar structure there. It looked almost identical, but it was larger. It also had old boat cleats on it. So at that point I was convinced it was from an old boathouse, but the shallow water still puzzled me. I then went to the Government Building complex in Viera and perused their many aerial photos that they have. These are as large as huge posters. They have a machine that would scan them and put them onto DVD. I bought many from them. In those old aerial photos was the answer. There is an aerial photo from 1943 that shows a boat house at the end of a long pier. It is in the same spot as the concrete remnants today. The difference was that US1 was only 2 lanes back then, so the boat house was further into the water. They filled in part of the river when US1 was widened to 4 lanes. So today the boat house is only a couple of feet from shore, but back in those days it was well off shore into the river. This would have been part of what we know was Clarks Corner. Clarks Corner is yet another interesting story that shows up in many local history books as well as online. Just do a Google search on Clarks Corner Titusville and take a trip down history lane. I will post a screen capture of the 1943 image of the boat house/pier in a follow up to this post.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 02:26:42 +0000
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