Western Days Street Closures Start Today in Old Town. Plus, 67 Lewisville Seniors Just Got Free Laptops to Keep.

Wednesday, September 23rd (today).

Thursday, September 24th.

Friday, September 25th.

Saturday, September 26th.

Old Town starts locking down for Western Days today, and the closures come in stages over the next two days rather than all at once. If you drive through the historic district for work, school pickup, or just habit, today is the day the usual route stops working.

The first wave hits this morning. The City Hall east parking lot closes at 6 AM, and by 9 AM the city closes Church Street from Kealy to Charles and Mill Street from Main to Walters. Thursday brings a second, wider round: Charles from Elm to Seven Mile Cafe and Church from Charles to Herod close at 6 AM, Main Street from Mill to Kealy closes at noon, and Walters from Kealy to Charles along with Mill from Walters to College close at 5 PM.

By Friday afternoon, the footprint is set for the festival itself, which runs Friday evening through Saturday night. The city's advice for anyone who still needs to get in and out of the neighborhood this week is to plan the trip before the closures hit, not during them, and to lean on the free shuttles once the festival opens rather than fight for a parking spot inside the perimeter.

Event Details

📅 Date: Wednesday, September 23 through Thursday, September 24, with the closures then holding through the festival Friday and Saturday

🕐 Time: Staged closures beginning 6 AM each day

📍 Location: Old Town Lewisville, centered on Main, Church, Mill, Charles, and Walters streets

Source: City of Lewisville Western Days Parking & Shuttle

AT&T partnered with the nonprofits Compudopt and Human I-T to hand out 67 refurbished laptops to Lewisville High School students on Tuesday, and unlike a school-issued Chromebook, these do not go back at graduation. State Senator Tan Parker stopped by to help hand them out.

The distribution was one stop on a ten-city AT&T tour that is putting 1,000 refurbished laptops into students' hands nationwide, with Communities in Schools of North Texas helping identify which Lewisville students needed one most. The laptops themselves come from AT&T's e-waste reduction push, which the company says has kept more than 10,000 pounds and roughly $1 million worth of electronics out of landfills by refurbishing them instead.

For the students who lined up Tuesday, the appeal was simple. Senior America Martinez put it this way: being able to keep the laptop after graduation is a blessing, and it is nice to see a program outside the school caring about their education.

Source: Cross Timbers Gazette

LISD's latest Alumni Spotlight profiles Ashlyn Straw, a 2011 Marcus High graduate who is now an assistant principal at Lewisville High School Killough, and her path back to the district runs through nearly every stop a career educator can make. She earned an English education degree from Baylor in 2015 and came straight back to LISD, starting as a teacher at DeLay Middle School.

"I have always loved the idea of teaching. But working at DeLay ignited a passion," Straw said. That passion carried her from the classroom into school administration, with campus culture doing a lot of the heavy lifting along the way. Straw credits the supportive, family-like atmosphere among her colleagues for getting her through major life changes, including marriage and becoming a parent, without ever wanting to leave the district.

The district connections run deeper than her own career. Straw's mother taught at Garden Ridge Elementary while Straw was starting out, and Straw met her husband, Jaxon, while working at Hedrick Middle School. She now plans to enroll her own daughter in LISD schools, closing the loop on a story that started in a Marcus High classroom fifteen years ago.

Source: Lewisville ISD Alumni Spotlight

The city's fall day of service, For the Love of Lewisville, lands Saturday, October 24, and organizers still need two different kinds of sign-ups: volunteers willing to work a shift, and homeowners who could use a hand with a project around their house. It is a one-morning event, but it takes both sides showing up to make it work.

Volunteers gather at 6:30 AM at Bill Weaver Arena before heading out to assigned homes around the city for projects like yard work, minor repairs, and general cleanup. Homeowners who apply go through the city's guidelines to see whether their project fits what a volunteer crew can reasonably tackle in a morning.

With the date about four weeks out, now is the window to get on the list either way, before the volunteer crews and the project list are both finalized. Questions go to Bryan McBreen in Neighborhood Services.

Event Details

📅 Date: Saturday, October 24

🕐 Time: Volunteers gather at 6:30 AM

📍 Location: Bill Weaver Arena, with volunteer crews dispatched to homes around Lewisville

Source: City of Lewisville Neighborhood Services

Jacobsen's Hardware opened around 1890 at Main and Mill streets, started by a Dutch immigrant named C.M. Jacobsen.

The big warehouse-style building became a fixture in old downtown photographs for decades, the kind of structure that shows up in the background of half the historic pictures of Main Street. It stood until 1942, when it was torn down to make way for Kirkpatrick Garage.

Source: City of Lewisville Old Town Discoveries

Lewisville Lake has eased down to 84.1% full, a fresh reading as of September 22, two days newer than the figure Tuesday's issue carried.

The water sits at 518.54 feet, about 3.5 feet under the 522-foot conservation pool. The slow slide keeps going: 85.5% a week ago, 91.4% a month ago, and 94.8% this time last year.

No advisories are in effect. Boat ramps, swim areas, and Party Cove all still have plenty of water under them at this level. It is not a problem for most of the lake, but shallow launches keep getting a little fussier, and cutting close to an unfamiliar shoreline is still not a great idea right now.

Source: Water Data for Texas

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