celebrate our heritage
The Ais were one of many tribes that lived in Florida prior to first contact with Ponce de Leon and the Spanish in 1513. The Ais or Ays as they are sometimes referred as, were hunters and gathers, not farmers. This Native-American tribe gathered fruits and nuts including sea grapes, coco plums, sea oats and palm berries. The name Ais came from the name the Spanish used to reference their chief. The Spanish named the river the Rio de Ais or, Indian River. A fishing people, they controlled some 150 miles of the coast from modern-day Cape Canaveral in the north to the St. Lucie Inlet in the south. Early Spaniards recorded encountering them, but it was Englishman Jonathan Dickinson, shipwrecked off the coast by a hurricane in 1696, who gave firsthand accounts of the Ais, writing they lived in small collections of huts framed with sticks and covered on the sides with fronds. The Ais migrated seasonally, living in the summer on the mainland and the winter on the barrier islands. As many as 20,000 Ais lived on the coast when the first Europeans arrived, but disease, slavery and warfare wiped out their population by 1760. The Ais did not survive long after Dickinson's recount of the time he spent with them. Further reading may be found here and here.
our story begins with indians
The first phase of settlement on the barrier island, in what is now known as Indialantic, began in the late 1800’s. Captain Mills Olcott Burnham, who served as the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse keeper for 80 years, began a pineapple crop in the 1840’s. Entrepreneurs from Eau Gallie and Melbourne established pineapple plantations. The Indian River Nurseries opened in April of 1887.
J. H. Phillips built a home on his plantation in the Indialantic area in 1892. Produce was carried by boat to the railhead in Titusville, where it was shipped north. Profits were good and cultivation of the fruit expanded through the early 1890s.
Meanwhile, land values increased dramatically. Homesteaders like C. J. Hector, Jessie Goode, E. P. Branch, Maggie Johnson, and Frederick Webb paid the government $1.25 an acre in the 1880’s. A decade later, land on the island was selling for over $1,000 an acre. Then came the disastrous freezes of 1894-95. One Eau Gallie family, John and Juliet Aspinwall, lost 150,000 pineapples on their barrier island property. The industry would never return to this area.
Eau Gallie, Melbourne, and Melbourne Beach continued to grow after the freezes, but it would not be until 1916 that Indialantic began to emerge from the sandy scrubland to become a community. The person most responsible for this change was Ernest Kouwen-Hoven.
settling the barrier island
Ernest Kouwen-Hoven was a forward-thinking real estate developer who came south for health reasons in 1915. Kouwen-Hoven brought his family and stayed at the lovely Carleton Hotel on the bluff in Melbourne. He remained past the usual season and rented a small cottage in town. After taking several trips across the river, Kouwen-Hoven began purchasing land on the barrier island. The next year, when he returned to Melbourne from Chicago, he subdivided the land into residential lots, streets, areas designated for hotels, ferry slips, a golf course, and a public beachfront. Kouwen-Hoven’s subdivision of “Indialantic-by-the-Sea,” named by his friend, Mrs. Frank L Bills, had been born. He envisioned this one-square mile property becoming an exclusive beachside resort and indeed it did. The first map of this area was recorded in 1916.
In 1917, Kouwen-Hoven moved his family into their new home on the shore of the Indian River (where Eastminster Presbyterian Church now stands). Daughter Phyllis Hoskins later wrote of those days when she and her family were the first and only residents of Indialantic-by-the-Sea, “Provisions, mail and travel were by water alone....A Delco system provided electricity; a surface well with a pump supplied our water....[My brother] Jack and I attended school by boat....Our amusements were crabbing and aquaplaning....Summers were spent in California because those days were horribly warm and buggy.”
Lots being slow to sell at first, Kouwen-Hoven decided that he needed a bridge across the river if his subdivision were to succeed. In the face of popular skepticism and lack of public funding, Kouwen-Hoven sold bonds for $100 each (another $20 would buy a lot) and began to finance the bridge himself in 1918. It became known as the Kouwen-Hoven’s Folly because of predictions it would never be completed. Using lumber from his own portable sawmills, Kouwen-Hoven completed the 1 7/8-mile bridge in 1921. Lighted by kerosene lanterns, the bridge was often set afire when they were blown or knocked over. It was not uncommon for drivers to travel with hammers to pound loose nails back into the wooden planks. The final cost was more than $100,000, half of which was covered by bonds Kouwen-Hoven repaid at 8% interest.
Because of the bridge, land sales on the island soared. Cleared, 50’x100’ lots sold for $400-1,000 each, and Kouwen-Hoven promised “cement sidewalks” and other improvements. Between 1919 and 1922, he was able to sell hundreds of lots, all the while increasing the size of Indialantic by acquiring and subdividing more acreage to the south.
In 1922-23, the developer sold the bridge and almost all of the remaining lots in Indialantic to Herbert R. Earle, who continued to promote and guide the development of the community. In 1924, two key edifices were the Indialantic Casino and Indialantic Hotel.
In 1941, a new concrete and steel swing bridge was begun. Construction, delayed with the onset of World War II, was completed in 1947. This bridge was used until the existing high-rise was completed in 1985.
A stable community of homeowners was established in Indialantic during the Florida real estate boom that reached its peak in 1925. The 1.05-square mile area was incorporated in 1952 with a population of 1,500.
Just south of Indialantic, Sebastian Inlet is where east coast Florida surfing made a name for itself. Indialantic became a strong beach and surf community, which only took off further once the space age came to town. Threatened and endangered sea turtles nest along the shore from May through October. Designated a bird sanctuary by a 1975 Town Council proclamation, the Town has taken measures to protect its abundance of animal species and plant life. Indialantic remains a natural, unspoiled paradise with several public parks and beach access points, as well as oceanfront public facilities.
ernest kouwen-hoven
Kouwen-Hoven’s original plat set aside lands for both these buildings as well as for a large golf course behind the hotel. Unfortunately, by 1925, the U.S. economy was beginning to weaken. The spree of investing in Florida lands came to an end after two disastrous hurricanes hit the state in 1926. Faltering badly by 1927, local economies began a deadly downward spiral as the Great Depression approached. Herbert Earle lost his holdings to his lawyer, Harold Emmett.
Indialantic lay in the doldrums during the early 1930s. Very little building was accomplished in the 1930’s, and properties changed hands at well below the prices they had originally cost. Some of the lots and homes in Indialantic would not reach their 1926 value until well into the 1950’s and 1960’s!
By the late 1930’s, the old wooden bridge needed replacement. Planners proposed that a causeway be built to reduce maintenance costs. The presence of two Naval Air Stations during the war revived the local economy. Housing was in short supply. Work on the bridge was suspended because of wartime construction needs at the bases. Finally completed in 1947, the new bridge was open just in time to accommodate the vast influx of engineers who relocated to Brevard County and were now commuting to Patrick Air Force Base. Commuters poured through the little community and a new housing boom would soon be underway in Indialantic.
Desiring to protect themselves from unplanned development and discontented about the condition of their roads, a group of residents formed the Indialantic Civic Association in early 1952, a membership of about 170.
Residents discussed problems and options, finally concluding that forming a municipality was the best plan. They laid out their immediate goals that Fall: zoning, improving roads, and retaining public ownership of the beach. Long-term aims included fire and police protection, a public water supply, civic beautification, and the numbering of houses for postal service. An election of freeholders was held on November 17, 1952, and the Town of Indialantic was born. Its new officials had their photograph taken at Indialantic’s social center, the Trade Winds Club (previously the Indialantic Hotel).
As soon as the Town was formed, the new leadership of the Civic Association began to compete with it for local power, attempting to dissolve the municipality the Association had just spawned. The issue, of course, was taxes. Realizing that no town could exist without revenue, the membership of the Association failed to support its leadership and the first major threat to the new town ended. Indialantic was off to a running start as it quickly passed effective zoning and other ordinances. Milestones in the town’s growth include the development of fire, police, water, and sewer services; the construction of Indialantic Elementary School (1958); the paving of roads, sidewalks, and a bike path; the completion of town beautification projects; the presence of Seaside Art Show (1967-85); the creation of numerous parks, including the preservation of the public beachfront and boardwalk; the construction of two new high-rise spans across the river; and the development of a highly successful business district along Fifth Avenue and A1A.