Sand hill
cranes and deer still forage for food amid the modern communities of Suntree and Viera. Images of the past, they connect our area to its roots in the late 1800s. In 1890 this place had no stores, no conveniences, and no roads. So why would people settle here? The answer may be found in an interesting mix of people and places: Plover Point, pine forests, Flagler, Wickham, and the Duda family.
Early settlers traveling through Brevard County made their way over trails, or by steamboat or schooner. Those that settled tended to gather near harbors or wharfs built to attract steamboats. Riverboats meant mail and supplies. Initially, the most prominent attraction here was “Plover Point,” (later Pineda) at the east end of Anderson Way and US1. This natural harbor may have offered hope of future enterprise.
Most of those stopping at Plover Point took a look around, then kept moving. The area was right in the middle of nowhere and had nothing but saw palmetto and miles of lonely pine trees. But when Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast track reached this spot in May of 1893, it spurred interest in those pine trees. It was the perfect opportunity to open a saw mill and put a name on the place: Pineda.
The original settlement was near the FEC track at the west end of Anderson Way (known on some plats as Pineda Park.) Enter the developers E.C. and Anna Dearborn. In November of 1894, this couple recorded their Plat of the Town of Pineda, showing hundreds of subdivided house lots (paper only) surrounding Pineda Avenue as the new central street (now Suntree Blvd). A major player was the land speculator John Aspinwall. His name still stands one block to the south. Prior to the Duda family’s interests, the majority of the land surrounding this little plat was owned in 36 square-mile chunks by a handful of individuals: Parrot, Haskins, C.J. Hart, and the Stewart family.
As pine trees were cut and shipped, little Pineda gained a reputation. Railroad mapmakers inscribed Pineda on their maps. Just as Suntree and Viera are recent developments, Pineda was Brevard’s new town of the late 1800s. Besides the lumber mill, a turpentine still was built. Homes were constructed for the workers. A schoolhouse was erected. Cattle were shipped from Pineda along with lumber. The town and lumber mill at Pineda flourished until 1923 when the mill burned.
With the main industry in ashes, many residents moved to Eau Gallie or Bovine (north Turtlemound Road). Pineda was now just a dot on old maps. However the area had another lucrative physical attribute. It was located exactly on the dividing line between two ranges, 36 and 37. That fact lay dormant during the 1930s while young Joe Wickham explored the area along with his father, surveying new county roads. Later as a county commissioner during the fifties, Wickham thought of that range line: a new road would be perfect there. Being a 
logically-minded man, he imagined his new road running north through his district, exactly halfway between the Indian River and Lake Washington. This road would consolidate his district and tie the county together. His distracters claimed it would be a “road to nowhere.” Wickham would not be denied. He chose the dividing line of ranges 36 and 37 for his new road — a path coincidentally leading directly to the river’s edge at Pineda! When Wickham’s bulldozers reached the Pineda area they smashed through a moonshine still, then ran out of land and turned west. It was now easy to envision another route to Osceola county. For decades Wickham Road, a dirt trail, passed through Duda farmland heading toward the St. John’s River as proposed State Road 536.
Wickham’s vision and initiative gave Suntree and Viera a major thoroughfare that drew developers to the area. After the completion of I-95 during the early 1970s, the potential of the entire area picked up. More developers were attracted.
The Duda family owned a great deal of farmland in the hinterlands. The development to the west of Pineda caused the Dudas to plan for the consequences of growth coming their way. The result was the Viera Company and the planned town of Viera. Luckily, as farmers and ranchers, the Dudas are well aware of the many values in the land. They have set aside areas for parks, as well as 5,000 acres for their Viera Wilderness Park, their commitment to preserve Florida’s pines, prairie and our natural heritage. All information is based on Brevard County, Florida: A Short History to 1955 available at Amazon for PC (Kindle cloud), Kindle, Tablet, or your Smartphone.
Brevard County, Florida : A Short History to 1955 (Book Review)