Chuluota

Chuluota. . The name Chuluota, probably of Indian derivation, should be pronounced Chu' le o tah., The late Josie Jacobs Prevatt wrote: "Soon after the close of the Civil War several families residing in Whitesville, N.C. decided to move to Florida." Nine families, still represented in the Chuluota area, found their way by boat and oxcart to land between Lake Pickett and Lake Mills. They were the Jacobs families (W.C., G.M., and P.J.) and the Harrell, Roberts, Long, Simmons, Mizelle and Taylor families. W.C. Jacobs was the patriarch of the community., The original Chuluota was settled near Lake Mills (probably named for Robert Mills who moved there in 1870 from Orlando because he thought it had brighter prospects). When the Okeechobee branch of the Florida East Coast Railway was begun in 1910, activity moved toward the new railroad station about a mile west of the big lake., Herbert Stoddard, noted naturalist and authority on the management of the bobwhite quail, lived in Chuluota from 1893 until 1900. In his autobiography he describes his life in the backwoods of Florida from the age of four through eleven as "invaluable" and stated: "I had not had shoes on my feet for seven of the most wonderful years a boy ever lived.", Three of the buildings from the railroad days are still very much in use. The stationmaster's estate agent, Charles D. Brumley, were constructed in 1913. In 1914 Lake Catherine Inn was built as a haven for those from the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine who wanted to hunt and fish.