Humans have lived on and around Cape Canaveral for at least 12,000 years. During the middle Archaic period, from roughly 5000 BC to 2000 BC, the Mount Taylor culture occupied northeast Florida, including the cape. The Orange culture succeeded it and became one of the earliest in North America to produce pottery. By the time Europeans arrived, the St. Johns culture had shaped the region for over two thousand years, its Indian River variant blending influences from the Belle Glade culture to the south. The Ais and Surruque peoples were the cape's inhabitants during the first Spanish colonial period. In December 1571, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez was shipwrecked off the coast and encountered the Ais. From 1605 to 1606, Governor Pedro de Ibarra sent Alvaro Mexia on a diplomatic mission to the Ais nation, establishing formal ties between the Spanish colonial government and the indigenous people who controlled this stretch of coast.

Cape Canaveral's modern history is a story of ambition interrupted. The hurricane of August 1885 pushed a wall of water over the barrier island, flooding homesteaders and eroding the beach so severely that the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse had to be relocated inland. Settlement slowed to a crawl. Five years later, the 1890 graduating class of Harvard University founded the Canaveral Club, a hunting retreat on the cape that attracted presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. The grand clubhouse fell into disrepair in the 1920s and eventually burned. In the early twentieth century, small communities with names like Artesia, Canaveral Harbor, and De Soto Beach sprang up, and visionaries imagined a resort destination on the Atlantic. The stock market crash of 1929 killed those plans. In the 1930s, a group of wealthy journalists built a community called Journalista Beach, now known as Avon by the Sea. One family, the Brossier brothers, started a local publication called the Evening Star Reporter that would eventually become the Orlando Sentinel.

On May 11, 1949, President Harry Truman signed legislation establishing the Joint Long Range Proving Ground, and Cape Canaveral became a missile test site. Construction began on May 9, 1950, when the Duval Engineering Company of Jacksonville broke ground on the cape's first paved road and first permanent launch site. The location was not arbitrary. Rockets benefit from launching eastward to exploit Earth's rotation, and the linear velocity of the planet's surface is greatest near the equator. Cape Canaveral's relatively southerly latitude on the east coast of Florida offered the right combination: an eastward trajectory over open ocean with no populated areas downrange, plus the logistical advantages of mainland infrastructure. Port Canaveral, whose construction began in July 1950 and was dedicated on November 4, 1953, added deep-water access. Congress had approved the port in 1929, half a century after the U.S. Navy first petitioned for it in 1878.

Six days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, President Lyndon Johnson announced on Thanksgiving evening that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy. Jacqueline Kennedy had suggested renaming the space facility as a memorial, and Johnson extended the honor to the entire geographic feature. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the change in December 1963, but Floridians resisted from the start, particularly residents of the city of Cape Canaveral. The Gemini missions, the Apollo missions, and the first Skylab mission all launched under the Cape Kennedy name. In May 1973, the Florida Legislature passed a law restoring the 400-year-old name. Senator Ted Kennedy had already stated in 1970 that the decision belonged to the citizens of Florida. The restoration became official on October 9, 1973. The first crewed launch under the restored name was Skylab 4 on November 16, 1973, the same date as Kennedy's final visit to the space facility a decade earlier.

Cape Canaveral today is defined by contrasts layered across a narrow barrier island. Port Canaveral ranks among the busiest cruise ports in the world, funneling vacationers past a coastline that doubles as a military launch range. The Space Force Station occupies the northern cape, while Kennedy Space Center sprawls across adjacent Merritt Island, separated by the Banana River. The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse still stands, relocated inland after the 1885 hurricane. Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore protect the ecology surrounding the launch pads. The name Canaveral has survived five centuries, two colonial powers, a presidential renaming, and the transformation of a fishing village into the busiest spaceport on Earth.