The Merritt Island Adventure

This video is a documentary of the lives of the homesteaders living on Merritt Island in Florida in the area that is now owned by NASA operating the Kennedy Space Center and also managed as Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. NASA used eminent domain to acquire the property in the late 1950's - 60's. Here are the stories of how people lived very primitively on the land and what happened when they were forced to move. For this film, they were brought back to the homestead, back to the very foundations where they still existed. Some early settlers are able to visit their home sites where the land is open to the public; however, some have never had access to their home site because it lies within the security area of Kennedy Space Center. Many residents are proud that their land went to support a successful space program that sent man to the moon! Although residents were forced to move, they are glad the land is protected as a National Wildlife Refuge and not developed like so much of the Florida coastline. The refuge remains pristine and very similar to how they remembered growing up there.