While Oviedo might be one of Central Florida's oldest communities, first settled some 140 years ago, this Seminole County boomtown knows how to embrace newcomers. Indeed, few Central Florida municipalities have witnessed the kind of growth Oviedo has seen in recent years. The town's population is closing in on 30,000-more than a tenfold increase since 1980. Oviedo's growth was a long time coming. The area's first settlers, who put down stakes near Lake Jesup in the 1860s, called it Solary's Wharf. In 1883 postmaster Andrew Aulin dubbed it Oviedo, supposedly after seeing a Spanish town of the same name on a map. Then, after the railroad arrived in 1886, the town became a major shipping point for both celery and citrus. Among the early settlers was Andrew Duda Sr., who made his fortune growing celery and founded A. Duda and Sons, today one of the world's largest growers of sod. Longtime locals point to 1964 as perhaps the most significant year in Oviedo's history. That's when a desolate 1,145-acre tract in rural northeast Orange County, about seven miles east of the city, was selected as the site for Florida Technological University (now the University of Central Florida). Initially, the carpet bagging Ph.D.s and the wary farmers made an unlikely combination. But they were united by their desire to maintain Oviedo's small-town ambiance and to cling to its agricultural heritage. Indeed, the biggest worry among many longtime residents these days is that Oviedo's sleepy old downtown might go the way of the long-vanished orange groves and celery fields. Oviedo on the Park, a.k.a. "the new downtown," is planned for what's now a tangerine grove just north of Mitchell Hammock Road. The 50-acre development would encompass 1,200 residential units as well as a park, a lake, an amphitheater and 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. Others, however, are all for the project, noting that the old downtown isn't particularly quaint or even historic. Indeed, for those just passing through who are forced to stop at the gnarly intersection of state roads 419, 426 and 434, there's not a lot to catch the eye: the Town House restaurant, a huge Baptist church and a two-block row of fading cinder-block buildings housing an assortment of mom-and-pop businesses. Drivers must take care to avoid chickens, unofficial city mascots who wander aimlessly across the streets and watch passers-by from the sidewalks and rights-of-way. The chickens are said to have arrived-no one knows how-sometime in the 1970s and have adopted the old downtown as their own. Take the time to wander the side streets, however, and an altogether different picture of Oviedo emerges, one of gracious old homes, rolling grass lawns and moss-shrouded oak trees. Indeed, the Oviedo Historical Trail lists no fewer than 85 sites, including the home of pioneer postmaster George Browne, built in 1885, and the James Wilson House, built in 1938 on Lake Charm Circle. Another big draw for relocators is the Oviedo area's public schools, all of which received A's when the state Department of Education handed out grades last summer. Nearby, unincorporated Chuluota is experiencing a transformation from rural enclave to booming suburb. Two new subdivisions, Osprey Lakes and The Trails, have doubled the town's population, and it's expected that several hundred acres at the Seminole-Orange county line will be developed as well. In fact, the once-isolated town is projected to grow 48 percent by 2016.