History of Lewisville & Old Town

Historic Summary

Lewisville was formally incorporated more than 75 years ago following an election on January 15, 1925, but the settlement as a community actually began about 80 years earlier. In the 1840’s, the Republic of Texas gave a grant to the Texas Emigration and Land Company to bring 600 families to what is now Denton County. Each family was to receive 640 acres of land, bachelors receiving 320 acres. By 1846 the necessary families had arrived and Denton County was formed. The first settlers to the Lewisville area were the families of John and Augustus King who migrated to the area in 1844. Following their lead, John and James Holford brought several families from Platt, Missouri, and settled on the western part of the King land. The area, which became known as the Holford Prairie Settlement, was near the present day location of the Old Hall Cemetery on McGee Lane and extended south to the Prairie Creek. In 1855, Basdeal Lewis bought the Holford Land and laid out a town that he named for himself.

Although the settlement had been served by a stage line, the extension of the Wichita Railroad about two miles east of the settlement in 1881 caused a gradual shifting of the community to the area now known as Old Town. Many of the original “new” buildings were located very near the railroad (later the MKT and now the Union Pacific), but flooding on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River caused those establishments to be moved uphill and west to the area of Mill and Main Streets. A grist mill, constructed near the location of today's Sonic Drive In located on Main Street in Old Town, firmly anchored the settlement in the new location.

By the time of the incorporation election in 1925, the Lewisville community had grown to a population of about 850 residents and was served by five cotton gins and two saloons. The homes which were served with electricity were powered by individual “wind chargers”, a windmill type device that generated electricity for the typical bare light bulb hanging down in usually just a single room. Some homes also had a power plug to recharge the batteries that powered the radios of the era. W.W. Sherrill owned the water company that included a well, a “standpipe” or water tank, and the distribution system. Many of the surviving photos of Lewisville from that period show an elevated view of the north side of Main Street because the photos were taken from atop the “standpipe” which was located near the intersection of Poydras and Elm Streets. The limited water distribution system mostly provided water to faucets in front yards where residents filled their water buckets for use within the house. Although the community included a scattering of farm houses for a mile or more outside the “urbanized” Lewisville, most of the town was located roughly between Charles Street and Kealy Avenue and about a block north and south of Main Street. The former site of King’s Drug Store in the Lewisville Shopping Center was home of one of the cotton gins, and the shopping center parking lot was a corn field.

In the absence of a local government, the civic leaders of the time used “organized begging” groups such as the “Good Roads Committee”, “Good City Committee”, and “Lewisville Booster Club” to find assistance with laying the foundation for basic city services. Although this had met with a certain amount of success, civic leaders pushed for incorporation. The election on Thursday, January 15, 1925 marked the beginning of the municipality as we now know it…on a vote of 109-92. County Judge Jackson certified the election of the town’s mayor and aldermen on March 10 and the first official town meeting was held on March 16, 1925. The first mayor was M.D. Fagg, with aldermen J.E. Chambers, P.L. Jacobsen, J.E. Buster, Urban Moore and M.H. Milliken. The new group of elected officials rented the front room of the Woodsmen of the World (WOW) Hall on Main Street. The $4.50 monthly rent included heat and lights. The first ordinances regulated medicine shows and set speed limits for automobiles at 18 mph. The taxable value of property in the newly incorporated town was $779,086. The town floated bonds to purchase Mr. Sherrill’s water system and the first municipal building, a well house for a new water well, was constructed in 1927. That building, which also housed the town’s fire truck, is located at the northwest corner of Church Street and Poydras Street and was remodeled in 1996.

The population of Lewisville remained stable until the 1940’s, building to a total of 1,500 people in 1950. By 1960 the Corps of Engineers had built the Lewisville Lake Dam and U.S.77 (now IH35E) was moved west to replace Mill Street as the primary north-south road running between Dallas and Denton. Lewisville’s 1960 population was almost 4,000 and during the late 1960’s Hunt Properties bought, and had annexed into Lewisville, more than 2,500 acres known as the Lewisville Valley Addition.

The 1970 population had grown to about 9,200 people, but the big boom was just beginning. Fox & Jacobs and Centennial Homes had been building “overnight neighborhoods" in Carrollton, but the construction moved faster than the City of Carrollton could provide sanitary sewer mains. Those two builders, as well as others, discovered a Lewisville eager for growth and with more available water, sanitary sewer main lines and land--so the population here exploded. Entire neighborhoods were built seemingly overnight and, even with a recession during the last half of the 1970’s, Lewisville’s population had blossomed to almost 25,000 by 1980.

The decade of the 80’s saw continued residential development, but job growth also began to take off as Lewisville was identified as an employment center. The 1990 population hit 46,500 people and,at the turn of the 21st century, Lewisville, is now home to more than 86,000 people and 3,600 businesses.