Post #607512 by TikiTomD on Tue, Sep 20, 2011 5:39 PM

So, where was the Samoa located? Several of the earlier posts had suggested the site of the present day Wakulla Suites at 3550 N Atlantic Ave, a place that has a definite Tiki look to it from the street. However, all of the postcards, ads, et cetera gave the location of the Samoa as “100 feet south of the 520 [or Cocoa] Causeway on A1A.” The Wakulla is over 2000 feet (about a half mile) south of the SR 520 Causeway on A1A (N Atlantic Ave), so that’s a bit too far even allowing for some exaggeration or rounding off of the distance.

Wakulla Suites

Another post asserted that the Samoa was where the Ron Jon Surf Shop is currently located, at 4151 N Atlantic Ave. I support this as being correct based on the information that follows, although the online Brevard County Property Appraiser’s real estate records don’t go back far enough to explicitly prove this.

Ron Jon Surf Shop of Cocoa Beach

If we use dead reckoning on a copy of the 1949 Cocoa Ocean Beach subdivision plat (still in effect for this part of Cocoa Beach), literally applying the “100 feet south of SR 520 Causeway” address, here’s what you come up with...

The Brevard County property records indicate that the original building on this site dates from 1956 and is currently owned by Ron Jon Surf Shop of Florida Inc. Though at first this location seems a viable possibility, further research shows it to be unlikely. The original building on this site has been extensively remodeled and is currently the home of the Cocoa Beach Surf Museum, using space donated by Ron Jon’s, and it also hosts the Ron Jon Water Sports store, just north of the main Ron Jon store...

Cocoa Beach Surf Museum in Ron Jon Water Sports Store

If one examines the 1960’s street photo of A1A with the Samoa sign posted earlier in this thread, you can see that between the Samoa and the Crossway Inn, there is another motel (hard to read, but the name looks like “Executive Motel”), with a street sign and presumably a street separating the two...

As the Crossway Inn location appears in the online Brevard County official records, it can be used as a reference point...

I also ran across this Florida Today ad for an auto garage at 136 Marion Lane that stated it was located behind the Samoa Lounge. A quick check of the online records database sited the auto garage at Lot 14, Block 15, marked on the plat excerpt above, supporting the photo-inferred Samoa location.

September 22, 1968

Finally, after looking at more than a hundred newspaper citations on the Samoa, I ran across the only item that I’ve ever seen with an explicit Samoa street address, 4145 N Atlantic Ave, in this Florida Today ad...

April 30, 1968

That address would locate the Samoa in the southern block of lots now encompassed by the Ron Jon Surf Shop main store. That’s more than 400 feet south of the 520 Causeway, so distance estimating evidently was not a strength for the folks at the Samoa.

Then I came across this 1985 article that confirms that the old Samoa site is now the location of Ron Jon’s...

Florida Today February 28, 1985

That concludes what I’ve been able to find thus far. While quite a bit of archival news material was unearthed on the Samoa from the late 1960s until its sunset in the early 1970s, the beginnings and early history remain a bit of a mystery. So here’s an opportunity for others to join in and complete the story...

-Tom