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is a city in Brevard County, Florida, United States. As of 2006, the population estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau is 76,371. Melbourne is a principal city of the Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The city was named Melbourne in honor of its first postmaster, Cornthwaite John Hector, an Englishman who had spent much of his life in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, in South Brevard County, originally was a training area for Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. Some soldiers, who were attracted to the river and the ocean, returned and bought land at 5 cents per acre. After the Civil War, pioneer families arrived and Melbourne was founded in the late 1860s by former slaves. The city was named Melbourne in honor of its first postmaster, Cornthwaite John Hector, an Englishman who had spent much of his life in Melbourne, Australia. The first school in Melbourne was built in 1883 and is now owned and on permanent exhibit on the Florida Tech campus. In the late 1890s, the Brownlie-Maxwell Funeral Home opened and is still in business. The oldest black-owned business in the county is Tucker's Cut-Rate plumbing. It opened in 1934.
In late 1942 the Naval Air Station Melbourne was established as a site to train newly commissioned Navy and Marine pilots for WWII. The program ran until 1946, and the land that was used for that program makes up most of what is currently the Melbourne International Airport. In 1969, the cities of Eau Gallie and Melbourne voted to merge, forming modern day Melbourne.