Biohazard Cleanup Near Bithlo Historic District Bithlo, FL

Bithlo's name derives from the Muskogee word 'pilo,' meaning canoe.

Bithlo was once an incorporated town — it incorporated in 1922 and its post office opened the same year — but the town government stopped functioning amid economic hardship by 1929, and residents later petitioned the state to revoke the charter; Bithlo was formally unincorporated in 1977.

After World War II, Bithlo gained an unwanted reputation as a waste dump and pollution site in east Orange County.

Bithlo had a population of 9,848 at the 2020 census, up from 8,268 in 2010 — a dramatic rise from just 50 residents counted in 1950.

Bithlo has about 3,297 households, and more than a third of them, about 37%, include children under the age of 18.

Bithlo is home to Orlando Speed World, an NHRA-sanctioned quarter-mile drag strip on East Colonial Drive (State Road 50) that opened in 1966 as Central Florida Dragway and remains a hub of Central Florida drag racing.

Several of the tall broadcasting towers used by television stations in the Orlando–Daytona Beach–Melbourne market stand in Bithlo.

Bithlo is also home to Bithlo Park and the East Orange Babe Ruth youth baseball and softball program, regarded as one of the premier youth baseball programs in Central Florida.

Although it is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee metropolitan area, Bithlo remains semi-rural: about 22% of its residents lived in areas the Census Bureau classified as rural in 2020.