‘We just love Decatur’: Can this small city keep its charm as Wise County grows?
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, the parking spots in Decatur’s downtown square are filled with pickups and an occasional horse trailer. Some are visitors who drove in to shop for antiques or boutique clothing. Others are high school couples on dates at Sweetie Pie’s Ribeyes for a $10 lunch special, or lawyers dashing in and out of their offices beside the ornate Wise County courthouse, built in 1896.
Cutting through it all is the soundtrack of nearby construction.
You can’t get much farther from the urban bustle of the Metroplex than a city like Decatur, some 40 miles northwest of Fort Worth. Drive a few blocks down East Main Street from the square and you’ll hit cow pastures.
But there’s no escaping the growth that is accelerating at breakneck speed into rural counties that surround Tarrant and Dallas. Wise County is one of the fastest growing corners of North Texas, with a population that has leaped more than 18 percent since 2020. It isn’t slowing down; thousands more new homes are in the development pipeline across the vast prairie that flanks U.S. 287.
The growth presents a head-spinning array of challenges for Wise County and its small cities like Decatur, Rhome and New Fairview — not least of which is how to meet demand for water supplies. But perhaps one of the biggest challenges on the minds of folks here — whether they welcome the development or shake their heads at it — is how to preserve everything they love about Decatur in the face of growth.
Major developers want to build in Decatur
Nate Mara is a Decatur native who is now its city manager. His office gets a call nearly every day from developers asking whether the city’s infrastructure can handle another project.
“And then from there, it’s questions related to, ‘What’s my timeline to build? How quickly can I be in your community?’” Mara said.
Decatur’s water treatment plants are getting an expansion to double their capacity. There’s also a 530-acre business park on the southeast part of town near the railroad tracks.
On top of that, the city is working with six to eight major developers wanting to bring homes, retail and mixed-use projects to Decatur. That build-out includes 3,000 homes expected to be up for sale in the next 10 years, Mara said.
The city has drawn up plans for a second fire station, bought land for a third, and started conversations about a police and fire training facility ensuring there are plenty of first responders watching out for the newcomers.
Mara, like anyone else who grew up in a place like Decatur, understands the draw.
“Historically, once someone got out of high school, they drove away to college and they stayed away to work,” Mara said. “Well, now these young families are driving away, maybe to go to college, but they want to come right back to a town like Decatur and work.”
What makes Decatur a good place to live?
Mayor Mike McQuiston says he knows why companies want to move into Decatur’s business parks.
“They could choose to go practically anywhere, right?” he said. “But when they come to Decatur, they fall in love with the community. It’s really awesome when you hear, ‘We just love Decatur, and we can’t think of anywhere else that we would rather relocate our business.’
“You know, at the end of the day, I think we really have a great atmosphere of family,” McQuiston said.
Austin Jackson, the editor of the Wise County Messenger, started working at the newspaper in 2018 as a reporter.
His impression of Decatur before he visited was that it would be a sleepy little town, he said, but he realized he was far off when he pulled into the square. Jackson said it was a stark contrast to the town in Oklahoma he moved from.
Jackson recounts a story that he believes sums up the charm of Decatur.
Last year, the longtime owner operator of The Whistle Stop Cafe died. Vicky Barnes was the heartbeat of the diner who knew just about every customer who walked through the door. After her death, folks in town including city leaders asked Barnes’ family if they could volunteer to run the cafe for a few days to honor her and raise money for the family’s expenses.
“That doesn’t happen everywhere,” Jackson said.
Some people oppose growth in Decatur. Others embrace it
Stan Shults, the president of the Decatur school board, has deep roots in the city dating back to when his grandparents moved here in the 1930s.
Shults left for college but came back to the city when he and his wife started having kids.
“Decatur is very near and dear to my heart,” Shults said. “We moved back here about 15 or 20 years ago to raise my children, because I wanted them to have the experience I had here. I loved growing up in Decatur, it was the best place to grow up. Everybody knew everybody, very safe, very community-oriented, and it’s still like that. That part of it hasn’t changed.”
Though some of his neighbors resist the growth coming to Decatur, Shults has embraced it.
He just hopes the newcomers will embrace Decatur right back.
“People give you the shirt off their back in this town, and I hope the people that move here pick up that spirit,” Shults said. “I just want people to understand why they’re moving here and to get involved in the community. Don’t just move here and be a bedroom community and drive to Fort Worth. Get involved. Join Rotary, join the chamber, join the Lions Club, join all the different organizations that we’ve got.”
Carla Lee Johnson, director of the Decatur Conference Center, said when she found her way back to Decatur, she just “plugged right back in.”
“It’s just where we belong,” Lee Johnson said. “All of my people are buried here. I’ll be buried here. One of the first things we did when we moved here was bought cemetery plots. That’s commitment.”
Lee Johnson said it was a natural step committing to the rest of her life in Decatur. Her grandmother’s irises that were planted decades ago still grow in the house where her daughter now lives. Christmas time to her is seeing the hundreds of decorations put out on the square. She’s known the Decatur High fight song since elementary school.
“You know, high school football’s a big deal. The smaller the town, the bigger the deal,” Lee Johnson said. “That’s what we do here on Friday nights. And it’s just one of those things. I mean, literally, the week we moved back, (her husband) says, ‘Well, what do you want to do? I’m tired of moving stuff.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, it’s Friday night. We’re going to the football game.’ I don’t know anywhere else, where they will land a helicopter at midfield and hand off the game ball.”
It’s those kinds of things Lee Johnson said prove that even with all the growth, Decatur hasn’t lost its charm. She thinks the city is doing a good job of making sure the small town sense isn’t lost as new residents come and find their home in Decatur.
“You know you’re coming home when you can see the courthouse,” Lee Johnson said. “We’d go out to West Texas and visit my grandparents and come home, and you could see that courthouse from almost Bowie (30 miles northwest of Decatur). And I knew we were almost home, because you could see that courthouse. It’s just like a beacon in the night.”
This story was originally published April 25, 2025 at 9:30 AM.