Westlake, Texas
Texas
In the late 1990s, Westlake's own town board tried to put the town out of existence.
Most towns fight to survive. Westlake's Board of Aldermen tried to shut theirs down. During the late 1990s the board attempted to disband the town outright. Big pieces of it started disappearing. The large Solana development was annexed by neighboring Southlake. Several large tracts of land went to Fort Worth. Then a local district judge ruled those annexations broke state law, and the properties came back under Westlake jurisdiction. The fight was tangled up with development by Ross Perot Junior, and in 2000 the radio program This American Life devoted a story to it. The town has always lived slightly in the shadow of its neighbors. When it incorporated in the late 1950s, the name Southlake was already taken, so the ranchers and homeowners settled on Westlake instead. Before that, the land was the Circle T Ranch, two thousand acres put together by a Dallas attorney and oilman named J. Glenn Turner. Fewer than two thousand people live here now.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
During the late 1990s, the Board of Alderman attempted to disband the town.
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