July 24, 1950: America Gets a Spaceport | This Day In Tech | Wired.com

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July 24, 1950: America Gets a Spaceport

1950: Cape Canaveral, Florida, launches its first rocket.

Cape Canaveral , a name that would become synonymous with the U.S. space program by the late ’50s, was just an obscure spit of land jutting into the Atlantic Ocean along Florida’s eastern shore when, in 1948, an Air Force committee recommended its procurement for a missile testing range.

Actually, the Cape was only the committee’s second choice. But the original site in California was rejected after the Mexican government refused to let rockets traverse the air space over Baja California. (A near miss in Juarez, Mexico, where a wayward rocket from White Sands, New Mexico, crashed into a cemetery, probably influenced that decision.)

The British colonial governors of the Bahamas were not as squeamish, so Cape Canaveral got the nod. President Harry Truman inked the legislation in 1949 establishing the Joint Long Range Proving Ground at Cape Canaveral.

Aside from the clear air space, the Cape suited the needs of the military in other ways, too. Its remote location (Florida was a ...

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