The Brevard Museum of History & Natural Science is located at 2201 Michigan Avenue, Cocoa, Florida near Eastern Florida State College and the Johnnie Johnson Nature Trails. The Johnnie Johnson hiking trails are open 7 days a week so hikers can follow the trails to the Eastern Florida State College Planetarium and Travis Park.[2] Hikers may be able to see wildlife such as Florida gopher tortoises. The museum includes a 14,750 sq/ft facility that houses artifacts from the region and a 22-acre nature preserve.[3][4] The Imaginary Station for the Little Visitors features a space capsule and a play area for youth. The museum also features a butterfly garden maintained by Master Gardeners.[5] Visitors can view plants that attract butterflies, bees, and other pollinators.
The museum offers two wings of exhibits. The displays include a Florida timeline and rotating temporary exhibits.[6] As of 2013, the museum had over 3,000 artifacts.[3] Exhibits cover Brevard County history and Florida history. Topics include Indigenous Peoples of Florida, animals from the Ice Age to modern day, settlers to Brevard, Spanish ships, Florida industries, Flagler’s railway, space history, and much more.[7] Industries include the citrus industry and the turpentine industry. Visitors can view the personal effects of Albert and Grace Taylor, arrowheads, Seminole, Miccosukee, and Ais artifacts, shells, casts of prehistoric and modern animal fossils, replicas of a one room school, general store, the Cape Canaveral lighthouse, and much more. Fossils of a Giant ground sloth and mastodon can be viewed in the exhibit featuring Ice Age animals. The museum features the remains of the "Windover Woman", the oldest human remains found on the North American continent, a re-creation of the Windover Dig, a "wet" archaeological site.[8] The remains from the Windover archaeological site date between 7,000 to 8,000 years old.[9]
A facial reconstruction of what the Windover Woman might've looked like.
In September 2014, The Florida Historical Society became the museum's parent organization.[10] The City of Cocoa has ownership of the museum building and property and the Florida Historical Society owned the collection in the museum until 2021 when FHS donated the collection to the City of Cocoa.[11] The museum is also a part of Museums of Brevard (MOB) and a member of the Trail of Florida’s Indian Heritage. Currently, the Brevard Museum and Science Center (BMSC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and admission is free to the public.[12]
The museum also offers volunteer opportunities. Volunteers can choose to be docents in the museum or help maintain the hiking trails and educators can also book field trips by going to their website.[13] The museum also accepts donations including monetary, in-kind assistance, and items for their collection.[14]
↑ "The Trails". Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science. Retrieved 2024-11-27.
1 2 Datzman, Ken. "The Brevard Museum of History and Science is one of county's gems", Brevard Business News vol 31, no. 20 (Melbourne, Florida: Brevard Business News, 20 May 2013), p. 1.
Brevard County is a county in the U.S. state of Florida. It is on the Atlantic coast of eastern Central Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 606,612, making it the 10th-most populated county in Florida. The official county seat is located in Titusville. A secondary center of county administration, including a circuit courthouse, was built in 1989 in the planned community of Viera, Florida, the geographic center of the county.
Cocoa is a city in Brevard County, Florida. The population was 19,041 at the 2020 United States Census, up from 17,140 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Merritt Island is a peninsula, commonly referred to as an island, in Brevard County, Florida, United States, located on the eastern Florida coast, along the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the name of an unincorporated town in the central and southern parts of the island and a census-designated place (CDP).
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The Windover Archeological Site is a Middle Archaic archaeological site and National Historic Landmark in Brevard County near Titusville, Florida, United States on the central east coast of the state. Windover is a muck pond where skeletal remains of 168 individuals were found buried in the peat at the bottom of the pond. The skeletons were well preserved because of the peat. In addition, remarkably well-preserved brain tissue has been recovered from 91 skulls from the site. DNA from the brain tissue has been sequenced. The collection of human skeletal remains and artifacts recovered from Windover Pond represent among the largest finds of each type from the Archaic Period. It is considered one of the most important archeological sites ever excavated.
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