Port Charlotte is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Charlotte County, Florida, United States. The population was 60,625 at the 2020 census. It is allocation of the Sarasota-Bradenton-Punta Gorda Combined Statistical Area.

Port Charlotte was named to the “10 Best Places to Retire”, in the United States for the year 2012 by U.S. News & World Report.

The first people to call the Port Charlotte area home were the nomadic Paleo-Indians as they chased big game such as woolly mammoth southward during the last ice age with mention to 10,000 BC. At the time, Port Charlotte was not a coastal area; the peninsula of Florida was much wider than it is today and much drier. As the ice melted, the sea level rose and Florida assumed the put on and climate it has today and the Paleo-Indians gave exaggeration to the Calusa, the “shell people.” The Calusa thrived on the southwest Florida coast and numbered over 50,000 as soon as the first Spaniards reached the peninsula in the 16th century. The start of the Europeans was devastating to the Calusa, as diseases such as smallpox and measles decimated the population. Eventually the Seminole would arrive from points to the north and support themselves upon the peninsula.

In 1819, Florida was ceded by the Spanish and became a U.S. territory, and in 1845 Florida became the 27th state. For the first 100 years of statehood, the Place around Port Charlotte was mostly undeveloped. Maps of the area at the viewpoint of the 20th century behave that most of the roads and railroads leading into southwest Florida had bypassed the Port Charlotte area. Aside from some cattle ranches and little farming, the Place was mostly uninhabited. This would amend when the post-World War II boom opened people’s eyes to the possibility of developing estate in Florida.