The History of The Colony, Texas

In 1973, Fox and Jacobs — a big Dallas-based homebuilder — bought some 3,000 acres on the eastern shore of Lewisville Lake to build a housing development from scratch. They chose the name 'The Colony' deliberately, feeling a kinship with the early developers of Texas and wanting to honor the spirit of the Peters Colony, the empresario company that had recruited North Texas's first settlers in the 1840s. In 1974 the first model homes were finished, and the first families moved into their new homes that October.

The development grew fast. After a homeowners' association negotiated the land's release from Frisco's extraterritorial jurisdiction, The Colony incorporated as a city in January 1977 — and residents kept the developer's name, which the city council ratified that May. The Colony became a home-rule city in 1979. It's one of the clearest examples in the metro of a modern, planned suburb: no gradual evolution from a farm crossroads, just a lake, a developer, and a wave of new families arriving all at once.

The move that put The Colony on the regional map was Grandscape, a huge mixed-use development anchored by an enormous Nebraska Furniture Mart store, which turned a lakeside bedroom community into a shopping and entertainment destination drawing visitors from across the metro. With its Lewisville Lake shoreline and the retail draw of Grandscape, The Colony grew into a full-fledged suburb — proof that a well-placed subdivision can, in a couple of generations, become a real city.