Lewisville, Texas

Everything Lewisville is known for

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Lewisville

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Lewisville.

Interstate 35 42 songs Trinity River 10 songs Interstate 45 7 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Texas State Highway 199 8 songs

History of Lewisville

The Lakebed Hearths That Rewrote, Then Corrected, the Record RoadyGoat

When crews dug a borrow pit for the Lewisville dam around 1950 and 1951, they exposed something extraordinary on the future lakebed: clusters of baked clay that looked like ancient campfires, ringed by the bones of Ice Age animals. Excavations through 1957 uncovered roughly twenty-one of these fire hearths and the remains of some thirty species, including mammoth, camel, horse, bison, and the armored glyptodon, plus a single Clovis spear point found in situ in one hearth. The bombshell came from the lab. Early radiocarbon dates suggested the site was more than 37,000 years old, which would have made it among the oldest human campsites in the Americas and set off a fierce scientific debate. The puzzle was eventually solved: the hearths contained Cretaceous-age lignite, a natural coal the ancient people apparently burned for fuel, and that fossil carbon had skewed the dates wildly old. When Smithsonian archaeologist Dennis Stanford re-examined the exposed site during a 1978 to 1980 drought, the verdict held: it is a genuine Clovis-era camp, around 12,000 years old, not 37,000. Real, ancient, and a lesson in reading carbon carefully. (Source: Handbook of Texas; Texas Historical Commission marker.)

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From Holford Prairie to a Name Off the Rail Line RoadyGoat

The ground you're crossing was open grassland the first settlers called Holford Prairie, sometimes spelled Hallford, after John and James Holford, who arrived in 1844. That same year John King and his son Augustus came down from Missouri by way of Bonham and became the first families to plant themselves here, on land inside the old Peters Colony grant the Republic of Texas had set up to lure settlers north. The prairie kept the Holford name for years. Then in 1853 a man named Basdeal W. Lewis bought up the Holford holdings, and the settlement that grew around his purchase took his name instead: Lewisville. A post office opened under that name the same year, which is usually the moment a Texas crossroads becomes a real town on the map. The little farming community didn't truly take off, though, until the Dallas and Wichita Railway reached it in 1881 and gave the cotton, grain, and cattle of Holford Prairie a way to market. The grass gave the place its first name; one settler's land deal gave it the one that stuck. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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Two Dams, a Drowned Town, and the Lake That Ate Lake Dallas RoadyGoat

The huge sheet of water north of town hides a layered history. The first dam here, the Garza Dam on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, was finished in 1927 by the W. E. Callahan Construction Company and began holding water in 1928, creating a reservoir known as Lake Dallas. A small lakeside community called Garza grew up beside it. As Dallas and its suburbs ballooned after World War II, that lake wasn't big enough. So in 1948 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston District, began a far larger structure first called the Garza-Little Elm Dam, completing it in 1955. In 1957 the old dam separating Lake Dallas from the new reservoir was breached, merging them into one big impoundment that later took the name Lewisville Lake. The new lake swallowed the bottomlands and old shoreline of the earlier reservoir, and the rising water is exactly why the prehistoric campsite archaeologists had been excavating downstream had to be abandoned. The placid lake you see is really the third version of a reservoir that has been rebuilt and enlarged twice over a single lifetime. (Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Handbook of Texas.)

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Texas International Pop Festival, 1969

1969

The Texas International Pop Festival was the first major rock festival in Texas. Held August 30 through September 1, 1969, at the Dallas International Motor Speedway in Lewisville, the event was produced in part by Angus Wynne III of Wynne Entertainment. The Texas festival was held only two weeks after the legendary Woodstock festival in Woodstock, New York. It was unusual in the wide variety of musical acts it attracted and in its atmosphere. With a budget of only $120,000, the promoters booked twenty-six of the biggest names in blues , rock-and-roll , and psychedelic rock. Janis Joplin , Sam and Dave, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana, Canned Heat, the Grass Roots, B. B. King, Chicago Transit Authority, Tony Joe White, Spirit, Johnny Winter, Sweetwater, Ten Years After, Freddie King , and a virtually unknown British band, Led Zeppelin, all performed during the three-day festival. The musical acts were not paid much to perform; Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin were paid the most—$10,000 each. Some major groups that wanted to perform could not get in to play. A band from Michigan, Grand Funk Railroad, was allowed to perform only after the members agreed to play free and pay their own expenses. The festival was extensively advertised through radio and newspapers and was promoted at Woodstock. Consequently, music enthusiasts from all over the United States, and from numerous foreign countries, poured into Lewisville to pay the admission fee of $6.50 a day. Although the promoters anticipated a crowd of over 200,000, actual attendance for the three days was more like 120,000. The festival lost money, but was generally considered a success by those who attended. The promoters created a "carnival-like" atmosphere that featured booths catering to "flower-children." Astrologers, painters, artists, craftsmen, and leather workers; sellers of incense, T-shirts, jewelry, and candles; and food vendors all peddled their wares. Most who attended the festival camped on the adjacent 10,000-acre lakefront. At night, many of the performers joined the campers and played without charge. Initially, police and local authorities were concerned about drug usage and traffic problems on nearby Interstate 35. Although there were a few drug overdoses and problems associated with the intense heat, in general the festival ran very smoothly. The primary complaint from local residents was that the festival participants swam naked in Lake Lewisville. Interest in the Texas International Pop Festival remained years after the event. Various bootleg albums were released from live recordings of the performances, and decades later, bootlegs surfaced as sale items on the Internet. Got No Shoes, Got No Blues , a video of some of the musical acts at the festival, was also available, as well as reproductions of festival posters and programs. A Texas Historical Marker commemorating the event was erected near the site of the festival in 2010.

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Texas International Pop Festival

1969

The Texas International Pop Festival took place near this site during Labor Day weekend, 1969. It was held two weeks after the Woodstock Music and Art Fair introduced much of mainstream America to the “hippie” culture by way of news reports of the chaos that occurred there in part due to rainy weather and lax security. The Texas festival brought as many as 150,000 hippies, bikers and music lovers to Lewisville, which at the time had a population of approximately 9,000 citizens. The Dallas International Motor Speedway, situated along Interstate Highway 35 south of town, was chosen as the location for the event. Twenty-five musical acts, representing the genres of soul, blues and rock and roll performed during the three days of the festival. Acts included Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, Grand Funk Railroad, Chicago Transit Authority, Herbie Mann and a relatively unknown United Kingdom band called Led Zeppelin. On the north side of Lewisville, a public campground situated on the shores of Lewisville Lake served the thousands of festival attendees. A small “free stage” was constructed at the campground and local bands were brought in to perform for the campers. The skinny-dipping in Lake Lewisville that resulted from the lack of shower facilities and the late-summer heat drew much attention. Many locals demanded that the festival be shut down because of the threat of violence and unsavory activity, but there were no acts of violence reported at the festival. However, area citizens were introduced to a culture that had previously been foreign to them and many who attended look back on the festival as a life-changing event. (2010)

Historical Marker → · 3.2 mi away

Lewisville, TX (Denton County)

1969

Lewisville is nine miles northeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in southeastern Denton County, ringed by Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton. The site was part of the Peters colony . In 1840 the Texas Immigration and Land Company was given an empresario grant by the Republic of Texas to encourage settlement in the area. In 1844 the families of John King and his son Augustus G., originally from Missouri, moved from Bonham, Texas, to become the first settlers in the area that became known as Hallford (also spelled Holford) Prairie, for John and James Hallford, who also arrived that year. Competition for land among increasing numbers of settlers intensified in the 1850s. The Texas Immigration and Land Company employed Henry Hedgcoxe to administer property filings, plats, and titles. Hedgcoxe's strict adherence to company rules and the law made him unpopular. During the Hedgcoxe War , disgruntled residents ran him out of town and destroyed his home and records. In 1853 Willis Stewart went to Austin to sort out the land claims. Stewart was able to settle the claims, aided by the General Land Office and, in the process, developed the earliest comprehensive homestead law. In 1853 Basdeal W. Lewis bought the Hallford properties and established Lewisville. That year the Lewisville post office was established. Rawlins, Kealy, and Herod built a gristmill in Lewisville in 1862. Several stores were built, and by 1867 T. M. Clayton and George Craft built the first cotton gin in Denton County there. In 1868-69 the first church was built at Lewisville, and the first Masonic lodge of the county was housed there. Lewisville grew rapidly after the arrival of the Dallas and Wichita Railway in 1881. By 1900 the population was 500. In 1925 the population reached 815, and the town incorporated. Meanwhile, the Elm Fork of the Trinity River was dammed to assure the area's water supply. Lewisville grew despite the Great Depression , and its population reached 873 in 1940. The population was 1,509 in 1950. Growth accelerated throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Expansion of the dam on Lake Lewisville and construction of Interstate Highway 35E and DFW Airport caused the population to increase to 5,439 by 1960. In August 1969 Lewisville was the site of the Texas International Pop Festival, a three-day event that featured such stars as Janis Joplin and B. B. King and drew a total attendance of 120,000. The growth of defense, aerospace, and computer industries, the relocation of many corporate headquarters and businesses to the region during the 1970s and 1980s, and the completion of Vista Ridge Mall and Alliance Airport boosted Lewisville's population to 46,521 by the 1990 census. By 2000 the population was 77,737. Lewisville is a planned mix of single and multiple family housing with an award-winning park system. In addition to the Lewisville Independent School District, an extension site of Cooke County College serves the community. Lewisville, a home-rule city since 1962, is governed by a council-manager government. Its five council members and mayor are elected at large. City offices occupy a $5 million facility that opened in 1989.

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Brooks, Benjy Frances

1958

Benjy Frances Brooks, the first woman to practice pediatric surgery in Texas, was born on August 10, 1918, in Lewisville, Texas, to Benjamin Barto Brooks and May (Henry) Brooks. The family resided in nearby Flower Mound, Texas, and later moved to Martha, Oklahoma. There, Benjy was joined by two younger siblings, Marjorie and Barty. An ambitious child, Brooks learned to read at a young age. She also demonstrated an interest in medicine and used manicure scissors to perform operations on her sister Marjorie's dolls. Brooks's ambition continued to influence her educational and professional goals after she graduated from Martha High School. At the age of nineteen, she earned a B.S. in chemistry from North Texas State Teachers College at Denton (now University of North Texas) in 1938 and went on to earn her M.S. in biology from the school two years later in 1940. Her thesis was titled, "A Bio-chemical Comparative Study of the Plankton in Lake Dallas and Pecan Creek." After graduating, Brooks worked as a high school science teacher in Carrollton, Texas, for four years before returning to medical school in 1944. That year, she entered the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston , where she earned her medical degree in 1948. Despite the fact that Brooks was one of few women in the medical field at this time-an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram announcing M.D. candidates even accidentally identified Brooks as a male student-she decided to pursue additional surgical training. Brooks accepted prestigious residencies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Children's Medical Center in Boston, and the surgical department at Harvard Medical School, where she was one of the first women admitted. She also spent a year abroad in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1957 and studied pediatric surgery at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and served in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps Reserve. She attained the rank of captain. In 1958, after completing her surgical training and traveling abroad, Brooks decided to return to Texas and became the first female pediatric surgeon in the state. That year, she began work at the Texas Children's Hospital and St. Joseph's Hospital in Houston and also was a volunteer teacher at the Baylor University School of Medicine in Houston. Pediatric surgery was not a well-developed field at this point, and Brooks often relied on her own creativity and innovation. Lacking specialized tools, for example, Brooks improvised and used jewelers' instruments for infant operations. Throughout her career, Brooks performed more than 20,000 operations, including, in 1965, when she was on the medical team that performed surgery for the separation of conjoined twins. At the time, the procedure was the first such surgery in Houston and only the tenth in the United States. In 1973 Brooks founded the Division of Pediatric Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston , which she led for ten years. Her skill did not go unnoticed, and an article in the February 23, 1975, edition of the San Antonio Express-News highlighted her dedication and quoted Mrs. Morris Norunsky, the grateful parent of son Harold who was born with a defective esophagus. Norunsky offered her praise and stated, "Dr. Brooks is more than just a human-body mechanic. She really cares." Alongside her surgical responsibilities during this time, Brooks continued conducting medical research on issues, including burn treatment, congenital defects, spleen reparation, and hepatitis prevention. Throughout her career, she published articles in medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Women's Association . Though Brooks never married and had no children of her own, she dedicated her career to helping sick children and was known for her kindhearted nature and tenacious spirit. She was a founding member of the American Pediatric Surgical Association and the American Trauma Association. In addition to

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Peters Colony

1841

(within area encompassed by) A reservation of land made under an Empresario contract by the Republic of Texas, 1841. Its purpose was to introduce colonists into this area. Under the first of four contracts, W. S. Peters and 19 partners agreed to introduce 600 families in three years, to furnish each with seed, shot, and a cabin, and also to survey the land. Each family was to receive 640 acres of land free and each single man, 320 acres. Of this, the company could take half for its services. Three later contracts altered terms somewhat, and although the land company underwent several internal upheavals, by 1848 there were approximately 1,800 colonists and their families in the area. Resentment over the company's share of land climaxed in 1852 when settlers drove out the unpopular agent, Henry O. Hedgcoxe, in the so-called "Hedgcoxe War." Because of its success in opening a large area of the frontier and its later effect on Texas land and immigration policy, the law establishing this colony was one of the most important in the Republic. In spite of unusual tumult and hardship, the final Peters Colony area today extends over five counties and encompasses one-fourth of the state's population, including its largest combined metropolitan area. (1970)

Historical Marker →

Lewisville Prehistoric Site

10000

During the construction of Lewisville Dam in 1950, a number of aboriginal artifacts were unearthed; archeologists conducted several excavations (1952-57) before the waters of Garza-Little Elm Reservoir covered the site. The excavations revealed 21 hearths, vegetable matter, animal bone fragments and lignite (coal) which was used for fuel. Scientific radiocarbon dating techniques indicate the organic material is approximately 12,000 years old. The Lewisville discoveries are similar in age and content to findings at the Clovis site in New Mexico. (1980)

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Lewisville

historical 21.3 mi away
The Sixth Floor Museum

Where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from. The JFK assassination site at Dealey Plaza.
historical 21.4 mi away
Dealey Plaza

On November 22 1963 President John F Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in an open Lincoln convertible and was shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas…
quirky 22.9 mi away
Big Tex at the State Fair

A fifty-five-foot cowboy named Big Tex has welcomed visitors to the State Fair of Texas in Fair Park Dallas every fall since 1952. He booms howdy folks over a…
quirky 13.0 mi away
Goatman's Bridge

A 1884 iron bridge outside Denton haunted by the ghost of a murdered goat farmer.
quirky 21.4 mi away
Southfork Ranch

The Ewing family TV mansion from the Dallas soap opera sits on two hundred acres in Parker Texas and is open for tours every day. JRs bedroom is there. The…
food 21.8 mi away
Pecan Lodge

Dallas' best BBQ. The beef rib alone is worth the drive.
spooky 22.4 mi away
Lady of White Rock Lake

Since the 1930s drivers along White Rock Lake report picking up a soaking-wet woman in a white dress. She asks for a ride home then vanishes leaving the seat…
historical 24.6 mi away
Southfork Ranch

The filming location of TV's Dallas. JR Ewing lived here.

Sports in Lewisville

⭐ HOMETOWN LEGENDS Class 6A · Football

Lewisville "Big John" our Fighting Farmers — Lewisville — a college & pro athletic pipeline

4 alumni who reached major-college or pro sports

Lewisville High School, a Class 6A institution, has a proud tradition of sending its athletes to major college and professional sports. The Fighting Farmers have seen several former students go on to achieve at high levels. This includes alumni who have made their mark in both football and baseball, representing the strong athletic programs cultivated in Lewisville.

Among these notable alumni are Taylen Green, who is a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, and Michael Fasusi, an offensive tackle for the Oklahoma Sooners. Damien Martinez currently plays college football as a running back for the Miami Hurricanes. In professional baseball, Dan Ortmeier played as a major league baseball player.

Pro/D1 alumni
4
Class
6A
Founded
1897
Key Players
  • Michael Fasusi — , 2025, college football offensive tackle for the Oklahoma Sooners
  • Taylen Green — , 2021, quarterback for the Cleveland Browns
  • Damien Martinez — , 2022, college football running back for the Miami Hurricanes
  • Dan Ortmeier — , 1999, major league baseball player (2005–2008)
The moment

Taylen Green is a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns.

Sources: Wikipedia · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Lewisville

833 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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