Cocoa's citrus trade: growers, packing houses and the Florida Citrus Exchange

Citrus built much of early Cocoa. By 1925, according to the Aladdin Theater’s National Register nomination, the town’s economy rested on tourism and agriculture, “primarily activities related to citrus growing, packing, and processing,” and the citrus trade carried rail shipping, trucking, banking and a wide range of shops along with it.

The grower on the river

The best-documented citrus man in Cocoa is Edward Postell Porcher. His National Register nomination calls him “one of the largest individual growers of Indian River citrus fruit in the early twentieth century.” He was president of the Deerfield Groves and organized and led the Indian River Orange Growers’ Association and the Indian River and Lake Worth Pineapple Growers’ Association, which worked for uniform prices, better selection and packing of fruit, and recognized brand standards.

He also changed how fruit was handled. The nomination credits him as the first grower to wash and stamp his fruit, the inventor of the first fruit-stamping machine, and the holder of basic patents for the first clamp truck for moving packed boxes in packinghouses. Behind his 1916 house on Delannoy Avenue, the state’s marker says, stood a large packinghouse on the riverbank that processed fruit brought by boat from the family’s groves on Merritt Island. His story is on our Edward Porcher page.

The freeze and the Exchange

The Great Freeze of 1894-95 closed packing houses across the citrus belt and put thousands out of work, according to the Park Service’s history of Rockledge. The groves recovered, and by 1900 Brevard was again one of Florida’s leading citrus counties. In the decade after, the form says, Rockledge and Cocoa were headquarters for the Florida Citrus Exchange, part of the state’s cooperative packing, shipping and marketing system. The freeze is covered on our freeze page.

The workers

The packing houses ran on local labor. The National Register nomination for Cocoa Junior High School, describing the Black neighborhood of College Park west of downtown, says many of its men worked as laborers in local citrus groves and packing houses, while many women worked as cooks and maids. The houses gave back in small ways: on Christmas morning 1928, when the Aladdin Theater hosted three hundred children from poor families, two packing houses were among the donors of fruit, candy and toys.

Further Reading

• A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith
• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon