Early Orlando: Fort Gatlin, the Jernigan Settlement and the 1875 Town

Orange County Government considers Aaron Jernigan, a Georgian who settled on the northwest shore of Lake Holden in 1843, the first white settler of what would become Orlando (county bicentennial timeline), crediting his work in community building (county bicentennial timeline).

Jernigan arrived in a Mosquito County that, in the 1830s, was home to native tribes, largely Seminole, and to over 700 white settlers spread across much of eastern Florida (county bicentennial timeline). When Orange County was created out of Mosquito County in 1845 he became its first representative in the state legislature, and in the late 1840s he built a blockade to protect local homesteaders from Seminole attacks, which became a central point of the growing community known as the village of Jernigan.

The City of Orlando tells the same story from the family side. Its history page says a small community had grown up around Fort Gatlin by 1840 and was known as Jernigan, after the Jernigan family who had established the first permanent settlement in the area (City of Orlando history). The two official accounts do not agree on the first year: the city says the Jernigan community had grown up around the fort by 1840, while the county says Aaron Jernigan moved to Mosquito County in 1843. Neither page reconciles the difference, so both dates are given here.

After the Army left Fort Gatlin in 1849, a few soldiers and their families stayed on to grow citrus and raise cattle, the livelihoods the marker records for the early settlement (Site of Fort Gatlin marker).

Fort Gatlin was a U.S. Army post established on November 9, 1838, during the Second Seminole War, and its state marker stands on Summerlin St. near Gatlin Ave. (Site of Fort Gatlin marker).

The City of Orlando places the fort south of the present day Orlando city limits (City of Orlando history).

The fort took its name from John S. Gatlin, an Army assistant surgeon who was killed in the Dade Massacre in 1835 (Site of Fort Gatlin marker). The Army chose the site for its position overlooking three lakes and because the area was frequented by Native Americans led by Seminole Chief King Philip and his son Coacoochee. Orange County adds that the state militia used the fort until 1849 (county bicentennial timeline), and the City of Orlando says the post was built to protect settlers (City of Orlando history).

The Florida Department of State marker for the site is dated 2003, and it records a later chapter on the same ground: in 1941 the U.S. Navy opened the Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory beside Lake Gem Mary because the lake is unusually deep, and the lab closed in 1997 (Site of Fort Gatlin marker).

Jernigan's post office was established on May 30, 1850; six years later the community changed its name to Orlando, and the U.S. Post Office adopted the change in 1857, the City of Orlando says (City of Orlando history).

The city links the change to growth, writing that the settlement was expanding northward at the time. The county seat came first: in 1856 the community around Fort Gatlin became the seat of Orange County, a date that the Orange County timeline and the state marker both give (county bicentennial timeline). The marker states that the name was changed later (Site of Fort Gatlin marker).

The City of Orlando says history is not clear on where the name came from and lists four stories, while the state marker at Fort Gatlin attributes the name to Orlando Reeves; the two also disagree on where Reeves is buried (City of Orlando history).

Judge James Speer, who worked to get Orlando named the county seat, figures in two of the city's stories: he either named it for a man who once worked for him or for a character in a Shakespeare play. A third tells of a Mr. Orlando, bound for Tampa with an ox caravan, who fell ill, died and was buried there, so that passers-by would say there lies Orlando (City of Orlando history).

The fourth, which the city calls the final theory, is the soldier. The city's version has a company camped on the east side of Lake Minnie, now Lake Cherokee, during the Seminole Wars, where sentinel Orlando Reeves raised the alarm and lost his life; the city says the south side of Lake Eola was chosen to bury him (City of Orlando history). The state marker at Fort Gatlin calls Reeves a militiaman who was reportedly killed in a skirmish during the Second Seminole War and says it is believed that he is buried near the site of Fort Gatlin (Site of Fort Gatlin marker).

The two accounts are official texts from the City of Orlando and the Florida Department of State, and they conflict on the grave, Lake Eola in the city's telling and near Fort Gatlin on the marker. This page states both rather than choosing one.

The county that holds Orlando was first called Mosquito County, created on December 29, 1824, and it became Orange County in 1845, the year Florida became a state, for the citrus groves that thrived in the area (county bicentennial timeline).

The original county was vast. Orange County Government lists its territory as including what are now Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, Marion, Martin, Seminole, Osceola, Orange, Lake, Polk and Palm Beach counties, and says new counties, among them Volusia, Lake, Osceola and Seminole, were later carved from Orange (county bicentennial timeline). By 1850 the county population was 466.

The county timeline describes 1845 in two ways, once as the year Orange County was created out of Mosquito County and once as the year Mosquito County was renamed at statehood; the state marker uses the first wording (Site of Fort Gatlin marker). The county says Orlando was and still is its county seat, and Orange County marked the 200th anniversary of its 1824 beginning with the timeline cited here (county bicentennial timeline).

Orlando became an incorporated town in 1875, when the City of Orlando counts 85 inhabitants and 22 qualified voters (City of Orlando history).

Orange County Government dates the incorporation to July 31, 1875, gives the same population of 85, and records that Orlando was established as a city in 1885 (county bicentennial timeline).

Jacob Summerlin, known as the Cattle King of Florida, arrived in 1873 and bought 200 acres in what is now downtown Orlando, and a sinkhole on the edge of his property became a lake known to the public as Sandy Beach (City of Orlando, Lake Eola History). In 1883 the family gave a strip of its lakeside land for public use; the lake took the name Lake Eola in memory of Robert Summerlin's sweetheart, and the city recognized it as a public park in 1888 (City of Orlando, Lake Eola History).

Lake Minnie, the camp in the Reeves story, is today's Lake Cherokee, and the Lake Cherokee Historic District, designated in 1981, holds 189 buildings, 160 of them contributing structures, bounded by the East-West Expressway on the north, Summerlin Avenue on the east, Orange Avenue on the west, and Cherokee Drive, Euclid Avenue, Delaney Avenue and Gore Street on the south (City of Orlando Historic Preservation Districts). Downtown was designated first, in 1980, which made Lake Cherokee the second of the six districts the city now protects.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, with the City of Orlando history, Lake Eola and historic district pages, the county bicentennial timeline and the Florida Department of State marker record for the Site of Fort Gatlin.