Written by Kris M. on August 22, 2021

Brevard Museum of History & Natural Science

My son and I decided to take a little field trip in March of 2016. It was right around time for spring break and we wanted to get out of the house for a day. We decided to take a day trip to the Brevard Museum of History & Natural Science. Then, while we were in the area, we decided to do lunch at the Cocoa Beach Pier.

The museum turned out to be a lot better than I expected it to be. For some reason, I expected a small museum that just has some old historical artifacts and shells, etc. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing at all wrong with those types of things. I just wasn’t expecting to see much that I hadn’t already seen. I was so wrong.

The outside of the museum was a bit misleading in that sense. They had many cool artifacts, they had many cool shells. But they also had skeletons of humans and mastodons and such that I found really quite cool. My son did too! We had a good time at this museum and learned a lot about Florida’s natural history.

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About Brevard Museum of History & Natural Science

The Brevard Museum of History & Natural Science was conceived in 1969 and opened in 1973. The main centerpiece of the museum, “The People of Windover” exhibit, contains artifacts that were used by local residents somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago. It includes an interactive archaeology lab space to augment the recreated excavation featuring an incredibly lifelike sculpture of a Windover Woman created using forensic reconstruction techniques (not pictured here!).

There are exhibits which features the Hubble Space Telescope: Eye on the Universe, which was provided by the Kennedy Space Center, The Apollo Journey: Birth of the Space Coast, and Stetson Kennedy’s Multicultural Florida, among many more.

The museum was formerly managed by the Florida Historical Society (FHS) and featured exhibits which explore the local and state history and culture from the Ice Age to the Space Age. Sitting on 22 acres of nature reserve, it includes nature trails which wind through several of Florida’s ecosystems.

As part of the transfer of management, FHS gifted the museum collections to the City of Cocoa after saving the museum from imminent closure in 2014 when they took over the facility. It was significantly improved under the leadership of FHS.

The museum is located at 2201 Michigan Avenue, Cocoa, Florida and is managed by the City of Cocoa now. Hours of operation are Thursday through Saturday only from 10am to 4pm. It costs $9 per adult and $5 per child to get in.

Summary

We didn’t make a Roadtrippers itinerary for this trip because there were only two places we really wanted to go that day. I did use Roadtrippers to find this museum but I didn’t really see anything else in the area, besides the beach, that we were interested in.

If you find yourself in the Cocoa Beach area of Florida and you’re interested in history or natural science, I do recommend you stop in and visit this museum. It has quite a lot of interesting exhibits.

Have you been there? I’d love to hear what you thought of it. What was your favorite part of the museum?

Please drop a few lines in the comments box below and let me know how your visit went.

In the meantime, safe travels!

~Kris M.

P.S. If you happen to use travel journals, be sure to check out the travel journal I created for my future Orlando Day Trips.