Located near Oviedo in Seminole County, Lake Charm served as a popular vacation resort in the late nineteenth century. Lake Charm was first settled in 1868 by Florida's incumbent comptroller and treasurer, Walter Gwynn, along with his family. Gwynn's daughter, Martha, named the lake because she felt the lake and its beautiful scenery had a unique affect on her health, leading her to believe the lake was "charmed."

In the early 1870s, Dr. Henry Foster of Clifton Springs, New York planted orange groves in the area and began to persuade his friends to build their vacation homes on the shores of Lake Charm. By the 1880s the resort community of Lake Charm was thriving, as a chapel and parsonage, hotel, post office, countless private homes, and the first paved sidewalk in Central Florida were built around lake. Some of the home owners included Calvin Whitney, the president of the Chase Piano Company and Methodist Bishop William Xavier Ninde. The resort community continued to flourish until the national crisis of 1893 and the 1895 frost that crippled the Orange Industry. Although it no longer exists, Lake Charm was one of the earliest examples of a true resort community in Central Florida.