The Colony turns 50 in 2027, and the city has started the countdown with an online history that runs from a developer's 1973 land purchase to the move into a new City Hall last December.
The city posted "Celebrating 50 Years of The Colony" to its news page Friday, linking to an interactive story map titled "50 Years by the Lake." It says events marking the anniversary will be held throughout 2027, with details still to come.
From 27 families to a city
According to the city's timeline, Dallas builder Fox and Jacobs bought about 2,500 acres on the east shore of Lewisville Lake in 1973 and named its planned community after the 1841 Peters Colony settlement. The first 27 families moved in during the fall of 1974.
By January 1977 more than 3,500 people lived there. Residents voted 459-37 on Jan. 15, 1977, to incorporate, and the incorporation order was certified Jan. 24. Luis Guerrero was elected the first mayor that April, and the first council meeting, held April 15 at the municipal utility district office, began with two decisions: adopt Robert's Rules of Order and appoint a city secretary.
Voters approved a home rule charter 175-32 in 1979. In 1980 a liquor sales election passed 1,082 to 813. The council named the in-town stretch of FM 423 "Main Street" in 1983, reasoning that every city should have one, and The Colony absorbed the small lakeside town of Eastvale in 1987.
Odd chapters
The timeline also keeps some stranger moments. The Purple House, a lake house on Main Street, was painted purple during a dispute over unpaid property taxes and torn down in 1999. In 2000 the Maharishi Global Development Fund announced plans for a building more than 1,600 feet tall at Plano Parkway and SH 121, which would have been the world's tallest.
