Brevard County

Brevard County is a county in the U.S. state of Florida, along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010 census, the population was 543,376, making it the 9th most populous county in the state. Influenced by the presence of the John F. Kennedy Space Center, Brevard County is also known as the Space Coast. As such, it was designated with the telephone area code 321, as in 3-2-1 liftoff. The county is named after Theodore Washington Brevard, an early settler, and state comptroller.

The official county seat has been located in Titusville since 1894, although most of the county’s administration is performed from Viera. Brevard County has more than one county courthouse and sheriff’s office because of its length. Hence, government services are not centralized in one location, as they are in many American counties.

The county is coextensive with the Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville, Florida, metropolitan statistical area, a metropolitan statistical area(MSA) designated by the Office of Management and Budget and used for statistical purposes by the Census Bureau and other agencies. Palm Bay, Melbourne and Titusville are designated as the principal cities of the MSA. The Melbourne–Titusville–Cocoa, Florida, standard metropolitan statistical area was first defined in 1973. Cocoa was removed as a principal city in 1983, and Palm Bay was added, with the name changed to Melbourne–Titusville–Palm Bay, Florida, metropolitan statistical area. The MSA name was changed to its present form in 2003.