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Cape Canaveral
Launch coast of the Space Age, once called Cape Kennedy
Cape Canaveral is a low, sandy headland on Florida's Atlantic coast that has been the center of American spaceflight since 1950. It juts from a barrier island in Brevard County, about halfway down the state's east coast. Its southern latitude and open ocean to the east made it ideal for rockets: launches heading east get a boost from Earth's rotation, and spent stages fall harmlessly into the Atlantic rather than onto towns.
The first rocket rose from the Cape on July 24, 1950, a modified German V-2 called Bumper 8. The Mercury and Gemini astronauts launched from here, and NASA's Kennedy Space Center grew up next door on Merritt Island, where the Apollo moon rockets and the space shuttles lifted off. Today Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy host a busy commercial launch industry, while nearby Port Canaveral ranks among the world's busiest cruise ports.
The name is one of the oldest surviving European place names in the United States, from the Spanish cañaveral, a reed bed or cane field. Days after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, President Johnson renamed it Cape Kennedy. The change never sat well with Floridians, and in 1973 the state legislature restored Cape Canaveral, with federal approval following that October. The space center kept Kennedy's name.