Colleyville has historically been primarily a rural area, situated for the most part between Big Bear and Little Bear Creek in the Eastern Cross Timbers of the central portion of northeastern Tarrant County.

The centerpiece of the community is the Colleyville Community Center, an elegant facility used for banquets, training events, board meetings, and programs. All rooms open into the architecturally-beautiful gallery and can be set classroom, theatre, banquet, and boardroom style, or any combination. The Grand Hall windows are the largest single-pieced arched windows in the state.

The outside grounds of the Center are comprised of a Garden Plaza "Balustrada" structure of cast stone which graces the front of the facility. The beds, which surround the Plaza, bloom year-round with flowers and shrubs and the stately newel columns host climbing roses. Over 2,000 square feet of pavestone walkways can accommodate garden chairs for a ceremony. The remaining grounds include two ponds with fountains and benches for viewing the rural atmosphere.

Although once a predominantly rural community, Colleyville has experienced significant residential development during the past decade. Founded in 1956, the city has grown from a population of about 1,500 in 1960 to 6,700 in 1980 and to 11,300 by 1989. Grapevine Highway (Highway 26) passes through its center, and many of its residents are commuters to Fort Worth. Today, the city is home to some 20,000 residents.

The first significant settlement of the area began in the 1850s. Samuel C.H. Witten came to Texas from Missouri in 1854 and established a farm along Little Bear Creek. He became one of the founders of the Spring Garden community, which flourished in the 1860s around a well-known school, finally declining in the 1870s as Bedford rose to prominence.

Other farmers continued to arrive throughout the 19th century. William Dunn settled property between Big Bear Creek and Bransford in 1875; the James R. Forbes family, of Bedford County, Tennessee, established a farm in 1887; and French native Anthelm Bidault began cultivating his renowned orchards and vineyards near the Pleasant Run community in 1897.

The communities of Pleasant Glade and Pleasant Run were hamlets situated in clearings of the Eastern Cross Timbers. Churches, schools, and stores served the rural population. Pleasant Run Baptist Church, organized in 1877, was the first church within what is now Colleyville.

The St. Louis, Arkansas, & Texas Railway (later known as the St. Louis & Southwestern or the Cotton Belt Route) extended its tracks between Fort Worth and Grapevine in the late 1800s, passing through the hamlet of Red Rock in the Colleyville area in 1888. The nearby community of Bransford, clustered around the general store and post office of Felix G. Bransford, disappeared that same year when the store and post office were moved to Red Rock, which was renamed Bransford. The new Bransford prospered over the next several decades, becoming the largest community in the Colleyville area. In addition to the post office, the town had two blacksmith shops, a livery stable, four general stores, and a lodge hall shared by the Masons, Odd Fellows and Woodmen of the World. Four doctors resided there.

Lilburn Howard Colley was one of these doctors. A native of Missouri and a veteran of the Union Army, Dr. Colley and his wife move to Texas in 1880, eventually settling in Bransford soon after the town was founded. In his forty years of active practice, he became one of the best-known physicians in northeast Tarrant County and was widely respected as a leader in the Bransford area. Colley's name became associated with a community that formed around a store opened by W.G. Couch on Glade Road south of Bransford in 1914. The surrounding area gradually acquired the name of "Colleyville."