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History of Colleyville, Texas

January 13, 2022

Colleyville started as a rural community located primarily in the middle of Little Bear and Big Bear Creek in Tarrant County's northeastern central portion. The area's earliest significant settlement started in the 1850s. In 1854, Samuel C.H. Witten traveled from Missouri to Texas and set up a farm down Little Bear Creek. Witten became one of the Spring Garden's community founders which prospered in the 1860s neighboring a popular school, eventually declining as Bedford arise to prominence in the 1870s.

Other settlers originating from the upper South included Ryan Harrington, a Civil War veteran and Kentucky-born explorer, who purchased land near the Pleasant Glade community in 1865; William B. Cheek, a migrant from Kentucky to Tarrant County's northeast in 1869, ultimately settling near the property of Ryan Harrington; and Jonathan A. Riley that settled near the community of Spring Garden and came in 1856 from Kentucky.

For the whole of the 19th century, other farmers ceaselessly arrived. In 1857, William Dunn established property between Bransford and Big Bear Creek; the family of James R. Forbes of Bedford County, Tennessee built a farm in 1887; and Anthelm Bidault, a French native, began raising his renowned vineyards and orchards near the community of Pleasant Run in 1897. The Pleasant Run and Pleasant Glade communities were hamlets placed in the Eastern Cross Timbers' clearings. Stores, churches, and schools served the population of the rural. The first church, Pleasant Run Baptist Church, inside of the current Colleyville was structured in 1877.

The Texas, St. Louis, & Arkansas Railway which is later known as the Cotton Belt Route or the St. Louis Southwestern Railway lengthen its tracks linking Grapevine and Forth Worth in the late 1800s, running through the Colleyville area's hamlet of Red Rock in 1888. The close-by community of Bransford which huddled around Felix G. Bransford's post office and general store, disappeared the very year when the post office and store were relocated to Red Rock and which was relabeled, Bransford.

Over the following several decades, the new Bransford flourished and became the Colleyville area's largest community. The town had four general stores, a livery stable, two blacksmith shops, and a lodge hall allocated by the Odd Fellows, Woodmen of the World, and Masons along with the post office. Four doctors also reside in the new town of Bransford.

One of the doctors that reside in the area, Lilburn Howard Colley, is a Union Army veteran and a native of Missouri. In 1880, Dr. Colley and his wife relocated to Texas and eventually take up residence in Bransford shortly after the foundation of the town. Dr. Colley became one of Tarrant County's northeast's best-known physicians and was broadly respected as the Bransford area's leader during his 40 years of active practice.

In 1914, the name of Colley became related to a community that was organized around a store on the south of Bransford, Glade Road, and initiated by W.G. Couch. The neighboring area slowly earned the name Colleyville. The Pleasant Glade and Pleasant Run hamlets had populations of more than 70 in 1940. After World War I, Bransford declined as the automobile outweigh the railroads for traveling passengers. John R. Webb owned the last store which shut down in 1925. The town became acknowledged primarily for a huge nursery constructed by Andy Felps circa 1920. Today, except for a group of houses near the train tracks, the population of Bransford has vanished.

On January 10, 1956, Colleyville was incorporated and its city limits are currently bordering those of Euless and Grapevine on the east, Southlake on the north, Hurst and Bedford on the south, and North Richland Hills and Keller on the west. Colleyville has undergone remarkable residential development over the past decades despite being a former predominant rural community. From the 1960's approximately 1,500 population, it increases to over 11,000 by 1989. As Highway 26 or Grapevine Highway passes through Colleyville's center, many of the city's residents travel to and fro to Fort Worth.

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