Merritt Island is a peninsula, commonly referred to as an island, in Brevard County, Florida, United States, located on the eastern Floridian coast, along the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the name of an unincorporated town in the central and southern parts of the island and a census-designated place (CDP). The population was 34,518 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Palm Bay – Melbourne – Titusville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center is located on Merritt Island to the north of the town, and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is located north of the space center. The central part of Merritt Island, previously known as Merritt City, is home to the majority of the population and includes the local high school, library, and shopping district. The southern area is heavily residential, with centralized light commercial and light industrial areas. History Etymology Merritt Island owes its name to the King of Spain. The entire island was part of a land grant given by the King to a nobleman named Merritt. Pre-Columbian Archaeological excavations have uncovered the fossils of extinct animals such as mastodons, giant land tortoise, camel, glyptodont, horse, mammoth, giant armadillo, peccary, and tapir, which lived in the area up to 11,000 years ago. Their extinction was part of a larger North American die-off in which native horses, mastodons and other camelidaes also died out. Possibilities for extinction include global climate change and hunting pressure from the arrival of the Clovis people, who were prolific hunters with distinct fluted stone tools which allowed for a spear to be attached to the stone tool. This megafaunal extinction coincided roughly with the appearance of the big game hunting Clovis culture, and biochemical analyses have shown that Clovis tools were used in hunting camels. By at least 800 to 900 BC, permanent Native American structures occupied the area. Their mounds populated the lagoon margin. Post-Columbian In 1605, Spanish explorer Álvaro Mexía visited while on a diplomatic mission to the local tribes living in the Indian River area. He called the local tribe of Ais people, part of the native province of Ulumay. Merritt Island is the prominent island on a color map he drew of the area, a copy of which is in the archives at the Library of Congress and the archives in Seville, Spain. Within a few years, all but a handful of these