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Comprehensive Plan, City of Paris, Texas Planning Process CHAPTER 1 PLANNING PROCESS - COMPREHENSIVE PLAN A Comprehensive Plan is an official public document adopted by the Paris Planning Commission and the City Council as a policy guide to decisions about the physical development of the community. It indicates in general how the citizens of the community want the City to develop in the next 20 to 30 years. The purpose of the Comprehensive Plan is to provide a rational and comprehensive guide for development that fosters economic growth, and encourages compatible and high quality land development. To understand the planning needs of the entire community, it is important to review historic trends of Paris. ECONOMIC HISTORY OF PARIS The following historic summary is attributed to A.C. Greene, Historian. When Lamar County was created in 1840, its first seat of justice was located at Lafayette, three miles northwest of Paris, then in Matt Click's tavern at Mount Vernon (a community that no longer exists seven miles south). The county seat was finally set permanently on fifty acres of land that George Wright offered to give for the site of a City. This area included the City blocks numbered 1 through 25 and the public square. Unlike most Texas towns, Paris looked north rather than south and west for expansion and trade. The Red River was the border between the Republic of Texas and the United States, and it also formed the boundary between the Anglo colony in Texas and the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, removed, via the infamous "Trail of Teazs" from several southern states. From its outset Paris benefited from the commerce that flowed across the river and the services the nations required. This huge market at its front door made the early progress of Paris easier. It didn't have to struggle to survive. Within a decade of its founding Paris had outstripped the older, more firmly entrenched Clarksville, to the east; and for a ten-year period after 1889, Paris was also the legal headquarters with the U.S. District Court for the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations and westward in non-Indian Oklahoma. The U.S. courthouse in Paris was not only one of the most imposing structures in North Texas, it was among the busiest in the Southwest, handling all Indian trails and lawsuits which were not based on tribal law. Nine men were hanged in its courtyard during that decade. The built environment followed closely the patterns of the social and cultural environments. Paris almost from its beginning was a separate sphere, unlike the sutrounding region; more Southern than Western, and thanks to its merchants more urban than rural, even though King Cotton ruled. Despite being the original Texas home and burial place of John Chisum, one of the great ranching names of Texas history, Paris was SV8288\WP(,ltinal rcp>rt 2-0I.Juc 3 BWR