President Harry S. Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Ground at Cape Canaveral in 1949, and the choice of location was deliberate. The Cape juts into the Atlantic Ocean, meaning rockets could fly east over open water with no populated areas in the trajectory. Florida's latitude -- 28 degrees north -- provides a meaningful boost from the Earth's rotation for eastbound launches, adding velocity that translates directly into payload capacity. The proximity to the equator is not quite as advantageous as the European launch site in French Guiana, but it was the best option on American soil. By 1951, the Air Force had established the Air Force Missile Test Center, and the Cape began its transformation from mosquito-infested scrub into the most consequential launch facility in the country. Redstone, Jupiter, Pershing, Polaris, Thor, Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman missiles were all tested here. The row of Titan and Atlas pads along the coast earned the name Missile Row.

Between 1958 and 1968, Cape Canaveral became the starting line for the space race. Explorer 1, the first American satellite, launched from LC-26A on February 1, 1958, using a Juno I rocket. Alan Shepard became the first American in space when his Mercury-Redstone lifted off from LC-5 on May 5, 1961. John Glenn reached orbit from LC-14 on February 20, 1962. The Gemini program launched its two-person crews from LC-19. Meanwhile, uncrewed programs were reaching farther: Ranger and Lunar Orbiter probes flew from LC-12 and LC-13, Mariner spacecraft headed for Venus and Mars from the same complexes, and the Surveyor lunar landers launched from LC-36. When the Apollo program needed larger Saturn V rockets, NASA built the Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island. But the Cape's own pads launched Saturn I and Saturn IB missions, including the tragic Apollo 1 test at LC-34 and the triumphant Apollo 7 that followed.

The 1970s brought the powerful Titan IIIE to Launch Complex 41, and with it some of the most consequential missions in planetary science. The two Viking probes, launched in 1975, became the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and return images from the surface. The two Voyager spacecraft, launched in the summer of 1977, executed a grand tour of the outer solar system -- flying past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune before becoming the first human-made objects to enter interstellar space. Voyager 1 remains the most distant object ever built by human hands. These were followed by the Titan IV era in the 1990s, which launched military reconnaissance and communications satellites. The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn launched from the Cape in 1997. Through six decades, the Cape's complexes evolved from expendable missile pads to reusable infrastructure, rebuilt and re-purposed as each generation of rocket gave way to the next.

The transformation of Cape Canaveral from a government-only facility into a commercial launch hub accelerated in the 2010s. SpaceX's first Falcon 9 launch flew from SLC-40 in June 2010. By 2014, the Air Force was planning 21 launches in a single year -- a fifty percent increase over 2013 -- with SpaceX accounting for nearly half of them. SpaceX also built Landing Zones 1 and 2 on the site of the former LC-13, where Falcon 9 first stages and Falcon Heavy side boosters return from space and land vertically. United Launch Alliance operates SLC-41 for Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur launches. Blue Origin leased LC-36 for its New Glenn rocket. The Cape's Skid Strip -- a runway originally named for the SM-62 Snark cruise missiles that skidded to a halt on it without wheels -- still receives C-17 and C-5 cargo aircraft hauling satellite payloads. In June 2024, astronauts launched from the station for the first time since Apollo 7 in 1968.

Cape Canaveral carries its history in layers. The name itself dates to the early 1500s, making it one of the oldest place-names in the United States -- old enough that when President Johnson tried to rename it Cape Kennedy in 1963, the Florida legislature reversed the decision within a decade. The Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum occupies LC-26, the pad that launched Explorer 1. Portions of the base are designated a National Historic Landmark. Decommissioned blockhouses sit within sight of active launch towers. The concrete pad at LC-34, where the Apollo 1 crew died, stands stripped to its platform as a permanent memorial. And amid all this history, new rockets continue to rise. The location that Truman chose in 1949 for its open ocean and favorable latitude has become something more: a place where the past is preserved in concrete and the future lifts off on columns of flame, sometimes within the same week.