Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Chuluota, FL

Chuluota is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in Seminole County, Florida, and part of the Orlando-Kissimmee metropolitan area.

The name Chuluota, pronounced 'choo-lee-OH-tə,' derives from the Creek Indian word 'Chuluoto' and is commonly translated as 'Isle of Pines.'

Chuluota was first settled soon after the Civil War, when some of its first white residents arrived from North Carolina by ox cart; settlers built orange groves, cattle ranches, a sawmill, and turpentine operations among the pines.

Developer Robert A. Mills is credited with choosing the community's name, and around 1892 railroad magnate Henry Flagler created the Chuluota Land Company and laid out the town to compete with Orlando as a center of trade.

Flagler's plats sat mostly unused after his death until a post-World War II housing boom in the 1950s finally filled Chuluota with small working-class homes.

The Great Freeze of 1894-1895 virtually decimated Chuluota's thriving citrus industry, the first of several setbacks that shrank the hamlet before its modern revival.

The Chuluota School was established in 1898 as a wooden one-room schoolhouse; its 1925 successor building later became the volunteer fire station and, since 1996, has housed Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10139 as the community center.

Chuluota had a population of 2,524 at the 2020 census, living in 926 households.

Local elementary students attend Walker Elementary School in the community.

About 18% of the CDP's roughly 2.2 square miles is water, reflecting the many small lakes scattered through the area.