Business View Civil and Municipal | April/May 2022

59 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3 PRINCETON ‘Progress with Purpose’ O nly a decade ago, Princeton, Texas was just a small farming town with a population under 7,000 that was virtually unknown. But that has all changed. “We have been for the longest time, a very small community,” says Princeton Mayor Brianna Chacon. “We have been kind of hidden on the radar. Our biggest city next to us – McKinney – you could talk to their residents and even they hadn’t heard of us. So, we’ve stayed hidden for quite a while, but they’ve finally found us on the map. We are here and we are growing like wildfire.” Originally founded as Wilson Switch in the 1870s, Princeton was firmly established as a quiet farming community by 1888. Things stayed relatively quiet until recently, when the population began to soar. “The town is now probably 22,000 strong and that’s taken place in the last 10 years,” says Princeton City Manager Derek Borg. “We issued around 2,000 single family home building permits last year and we