Soon after the Civil War, several families from Whitesville, North Carolina, moved to Florida, and nine families still represented in the Chuluota area traveled by boat and oxcart to land between Lake Pickett and Lake Mills. These were the Jacobs families of W.C., G.M., and P.J., along with the Harrell, Roberts, Long, Simmons, Mizelle, and Taylor families, and W.C. Jacobs became the patriarch of the community. The original settlement stood near Lake Mills, which was probably named for Robert Mills, who moved there from Orlando in 1870 because he believed it had brighter prospects. When the Okeechobee branch of the Florida East Coast Railway began in 1910, activity shifted toward the new railroad station about a mile west of the big lake. Herbert Stoddard, a noted naturalist and authority on bobwhite quail management, lived in Chuluota from 1893 until 1900 and later called his backwoods Florida childhood from age four through eleven invaluable, saying he had gone without shoes for seven of the most wonderful years a boy ever lived. Three buildings from the railroad days remained in use, including the stationmaster's and estate agent Charles D. Brumley's buildings, which were constructed in 1913, and in 1914 Lake Catherine Inn was built as a haven for guests from the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine who wanted to hunt and fish.