Nevins Fruit Company Packing Plant
The heritage of largescale citrus growing in North Brevard
This imposing structure once served as the Titusville area’s largest citrus processing and packing plant, and is evidence of the industrial scale that grove production reached during the twentieth century. The packing floor covered 31,474 square feet, with a 14,621 square foot mezzanine. A detached office building stood nearby. In the 1890s this area developed into a largescale citrus center when New York Fire Chief Thomas F. Nevins began to buy and develop groves. His “Nevins Fruit Company” became a major shipper of citrus to northern markets. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Jesse J. Parrish, who is credited with being a pioneer of citrus in the Indian River area helped transform the Nevins Fruit Company into a regional shipping association of local citrus growers and later founded the Florida Citrus Production Credit Association. Parrish also served for more than two decades in the Florida legislature, defending the interests of the citrus industry. The huge packing plant structure that he and later generations of his family managed serves as a symbol of the scale that the North Brevard citrus industry attained.
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