Oviedo

In the late 1860's Confederate veterans and freed slaves from the war-devastated South began moving into the settlement called the Lake Jesup Community, later joined by others from Northern states and from Sweden. One Swedish immigrant, Andrew Aulin, appointed postmaster in 1879, named the new post office Oviedo after the city in northern Spain. About 1870 Dr. Henry Foster of New York hired local men to plant citrus groves on the shores of Lake Charm and Lake Jesup. After the great freeze of 1895, farmers began growing celery, first in Oviedo and later in the rich muck of Black Hammock on the south shore of Lake Jesup. Citrus and celery became the mainstays of Oviedo agriculture for many years, with celery production reaching a peak in the 1940's. Oviedo also contributed to Florida agriculture by introducing the Temple Orange into Florida about 1900, when Butler Boston, a local nurseryman, budded the Jamaica Orange in the groves of J.H. Lee and others. Hunting and fishing in early Oviedo centered on Econlockhatchee and St. John's. Transportation was by boat on the river until the Plant System railroad, Atlantic Coast Line, reached the community in 1886, and the FC&P, Florida, Central, and Peninsular, later nicknamed the Friends Come and Push and the Dinky Line, connected it to Winter Park in 1894. Oviedo had a population of 500 when Seminole County was carved out of Orange County in 1913, and it had grown to 800 when it incorporated in 1925. Today Oviedo is home to thousands and a crossroads for the old and the new.

Oviedo, Florida · United States