Scottsmoor, Florida: A Civil War Settlement That Survived

Scottsmoor is a small unincorporated community in northern Brevard County established in eighteen sixty-one, one of the few Florida settlements that dates to the Civil War era. It was settled by early homesteaders who farmed the sandy hammock land between the Indian River and the pine flatwoods. The community remained isolated for decades, reachable mainly by water or sand road, sustaining itself on fishing, citrus, and the timber trade.

Scottsmoor briefly incorporated as a municipality in the early twentieth century but later dissolved, returning to unincorporated status. Today it sits within the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge buffer zone, surrounded by the same scrub and marsh landscape the first settlers homesteaded more than a hundred and sixty years ago. The population is a few hundred, making it one of Brevard County's oldest and smallest communities.