Biohazard Cleanup Near Sunset Gardens Melbourne, FL

Melbourne was first settled around 1867, when freedmen built a community along Crane Creek after the Civil War, and the town was incorporated on December 22, 1888.

The city was named for Melbourne, Australia, the former home of its first postmaster, Cornthwaite John Hector, who is credited with naming the settlement.

Modern Melbourne was created in 1969, when voters merged the city with its northern neighbor Eau Gallie - an independent city from 1860 to 1969 whose French name means 'rocky water.'

Melbourne had a population of 84,678 in the 2020 census, the second-largest city in Brevard County.

Melbourne has about 37,041 households with an average of 2.24 people per household, and about 59.7 percent of its housing is owner-occupied, according to U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts.

Melbourne lies on Florida's Space Coast along the Indian River Lagoon, the most biologically diverse estuary in North America, south of Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral.

Florida Institute of Technology was founded in Melbourne in 1958 as Brevard Engineering College by physicist Jerome Keuper, who started it with evening classes for engineers working on the U.S. space program; it took its current name in 1966.

The old Eau Gallie downtown survives as the Eau Gallie Arts District, home to the Foosaner Art Museum and the Historic Rossetter House Museum and Gardens.

Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway reached the Melbourne area in 1893, tying the twin towns to Jacksonville and sparking their first growth boom.

Melbourne's long-established public high schools include Melbourne High School and Eau Gallie High School, the latter a legacy of the once-separate city it still names.