"It was the land -- a long, narrow strip of post oak and blackjack oak forest teeming with wild game known as the Easter Cross Timbers and prairie grasslands that lay on either side - that enticed people to stay in what is now Southlake.
Nomadic Indians - the Caddo, Plains Apache, Kiowa and Comanche - moved in and out of the Cross Timbers skirmishing with each other, and the Spaniards, determined to establish missions, searching for settlement sites.
White settlers were enticed to the area from the mid-1800's on, wooed by land grants and a chance to start over. Families traveled from Missouri, Tennessee and other Southern states and stopped to make a home here.
During the infancy of the Republic of Texas, Indian treaties were agreed to; most notable were those efforts made by resident Sam Houston, who worked to set boundaries between the white settlers and the Indians. Several treaty meetings were held very close to Southlake. While waiting for various tribes to arrive for one treaty signing, Houston and his entourage camped for a month at Grapevine Sprints (present-day cCoppell), where they hunted buffalo. The chiefs never arrived and the meeting was rescheduled. The treaty was signed at Bird's Fort in present-day Arlington, and as a result the Eastern Cross Timbers became the demarcation line in 1843 between Indians and white settlers." (taken from the Southlake Historical Society web site).
When I mapped our approach into Southlake, I avoided Hwy. 114 because I thought it would be hard to stop and take a picture of a Southlake sign. Well, the route we came did not have a Southlake sign. We finally had to stop and Google "Southlake City Hall" which gave us an address to city hall in the beautiful Southlake Town Square. It was just starting to rain so all we could do was take pictures but we want to return sometime just to walk around downtown.
Plaque on the courthouse. 
The water tower painted on the bull's head says Southlake, bit it didn't turn out so great in this picture. But the painted bull is still kinda cool.
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