After the end of World War II, the U.S. military searched for a location for a new long-range missile testing facility, having found the existing White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico to be too small. After a failed attempt to establish the site in California, the Committee on Long Range Proving Grounds recommended Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The location was ideal, with a large flight path area over the Atlantic Ocean and away from population centers and shipping lanes. The weather would allow for year-round operation, the Earth’s rotation near the equator would give rocket launches an extra punch, and a series of nearby islands would function perfectly as downrange tracking stations.
On May 11, 1949, President Harry Truman signed Public Law 60, and established the proving grounds at Cape Canaveral as a joint facility for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. As America’s fledgling space goals were founded on Cold War competition and the desire to launch a satellite before the Soviets, early developments were born of competition between branches of the military. Additionally, military rockets like the Army’s Redstone and the Air Force’s Atlas were key to early space program success, and Cape Canaveral was thus a key location in the Space Race. NASA was established in 1958 as a civilian program, but still relied heavily on the Air Force facilities at Cape Canaveral. In 1962, NASA’s Launch Operations Center (later renamed the Kennedy Space Center after the president’s 1963 assasination) was established on the adjacent Merritt Island, forming the joining Cape Canaveral Spaceport.
