Lewisville

Lewisville is a city in Denton County, Texas, north of Dallas on the southern shore of Lewisville Lake. The lake, a reservoir on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, is used for boating, fishing and swimming by people across the Dallas area. Its earthen dam also shields the towns downstream from the floods of the river.

The Peters Colony, a land grant company of the Republic of Texas, brought settlers to the area in the 1840s. Basdeal Lewis bought land there and laid out a town site, which took his name. Lewisville grew as a farm town for cotton and grain, and the railway from Dallas to Denton arrived in the 1880s. In the 1950s the Army Corps of Engineers finished the dam that created Lewisville Lake, and the town grew into a suburb of the Dallas area as the interstate highway reached it.

The Vista Ridge district, by the interstate, holds a shopping mall, offices and medical centers. Marinas on the lake rent boats and keep sailboats and motor yachts. Interstate 35E, the highway between Dallas and Denton, crosses the city, and its shops and offices grew along it.

The Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area, below the dam, protects tallgrass prairie, bottomland forest and wetlands with trails and a nature center run with the University of North Texas. Old Town Lewisville, the historic center, has brick buildings around a plaza where concerts and markets are held. Each autumn the Western Days festival brings rodeo events, live music and a chili cook-off to the old town.