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City of Oviedo

UCF

Lake Jesup

Lake Charm Circle

Oviedo Marketplace

While Oviedo might be one of Central Florida’s oldest communities, first settled some 140 years ago, this Seminole County boomtown knows how to embrace newcomers.

Indeed, few Central Florida municipalities have witnessed the kind of growth Oviedo has seen in recent years. The town’s population is closing in on 30,000-more than a tenfold increase since 1980.

Oviedo’s growth was a long time coming. The area’s first settlers, who put down stakes near Lake Jesup in the 1 860s, called it Solary’s Wharf. In 1883 postmaster Andrew Aulin dubbed it Oviedo, supposedly after seeing a Spanish town of the same name on a map.

Longtime locals point to 1964 as perhaps the most significant year in Oviedo’s history. That’s when a desolate 1,145-acre tract in rural northeast Orange County, about seven miles east of the city, was selected as the site for Florida Technological University (now the University of Central Florida).

Initially, the carpetbagging Ph.D.s and the wary farmers made an unlikely combination. But they were united by their desire to maintain Oviedo’s small-town ambiance and to cling to its agricultural heritage.

Indeed, the biggest worry among many longtime residents these days is that Oviedo’s sleepy old downtown might go the way of the long-vanished orange groves and celery fields. Oviedo on the Park, a.k.a. “the new downtown,” is planned for what’s now a tangerine grove just north of Mitchell Hammock Road. The 50-acre project, developed by Broad Street Partners, would encompass 1,200 residential units as well as a park, a lake, an amphitheater and 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

But even if the old downtown doesn’t survive, the city won’t lack for historic places. Indeed, the Oviedo Historical Trail lists no fewer than 85 significant sites, including the home of pioneer postmaster George Browne, built in 1885, and the James Wilson House, built in 1938 on Lake Charm Circle.

Another big draw for relocators is the Oviedo area’s public schools, most of which received A’s when the state Department of Education handed out this year’s grades.

Nearby, unincorporated Chuluota is experiencing a transformation from rural enclave to booming suburb. Two new subdivisions, Osprey Lakes and The Trails, have doubled the town’s population, and it’s expected that several hundred acres at the Seminole-Orange county line will be developed as well. In fact, the once - isolated town is projected to grow 48 percent by 2016.