About Katy

Greater Katy is the term often used to refer to a suburban region on the west side of the Houston, Texas metropolitan area. This area includes the suburbs that surround the Katy city limits west to Pederson road, east to Barker Cypress road (some would claim HWY 6), north to FM 529 and north to FM 1093/Grand Parkway. While these boundaries are not exact, it gives a rough outline of what most people consider Greater Katy. Most of Greater Katy is to the east of the city of Katy toward Houston and includes surrounding suburban areas and unincorporated areas. The region includes parts of Harris County, Fort Bend County, and Waller County much as the City of Katy does. Greater Katy is one of the fastest growing portions of the Houston metropolitan area.

Katy is named for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (commonly referred to as the “K-T Railroad”, now a part of Union Pacific) that ran through Katy in the 19th century. Katy was once known as Cane Island. The name is derived from Cane Island Creek which runs just west of downtown. Cane Creek is a branch of Buffalo Bayou. The origins of the name Cane Island are believed to be from the fact that Katy was once a major sugar cane producer and rice producer. It has a festival the second weekend in October to honor and recoginize the former rice producing town.

Katy is home to the Igloo Corporation, an internationally-known manufacturer of cooling and portable refrigeration products. Igloo Corporation consolidated all of their operations in Katy in 2003. Katy is also home to Academy Sports and Outdoors, one of the Nations top Sporting Goods retailers.

Katy residents often split the city into two informal sections: “Old Katy” (or Katy Proper) and “Katy Area”. Old Katy is the actual city limits of Katy and lies mostly north of Interstate 10. This is the original Katy from before the 1970s when Houston’s Energy Corridor (and the development that came with it) made its way west on I-10.

The “Katy area” is made up of large sections of unincorporated Harris and Fort Bend counties and mostly sits east and southeast of the city limits of Katy. This area is within the Katy Independent School District and nearly everyone in this area has a Katy postal address.

The Katy area includes new upscale developments and master planned communities such as Cinco Ranch, Wood Creek Reserve, Grayson Lakes, Seven Meadows, Firethorne and Grand Lakes, while also encompassing developments from the 1970s and 1980s such as Memorial Parkway, Kelliwood and Nottingham Country.

All of the “Katy area” lies in the city of Houston’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ), not Katy’s ETJ. This means that the areas of “Katy area” are controlled by the city of Houston and the city has the ability to annex it in the future. The city of Katy cannot annex this area unless the city of Houston releases the area’s ETJ to Katy, which has occurred in several small chunks in recent years. The most recent instance of this was in 2001 when Houston ceded about 400 acres (1.6 km²) of ETJ to the City of Katy to allow the Katy Mills Mall and surrounding parking lot to be built entirely within the City of Katy.

The City of Katy is actually a very small area within Greater Katy. The City itself only has an estimated 13,000 residents as of 2004 (estimated). Many people confuse Greater Katy with the City of Katy, however there is no city representation or services provided to people outside of the actual city limits of Katy. Some of this area is actually within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the City of Houston the city of Katy cannot annex this area without express permission from the City of Houston. This has occurred on several occasions in regards to relatively small tracts of land. Most recently this came into play with development of the Katy Mills Mall, which sat mostly within the City of Katy but about half was in the Houston ETJ. The developer and city of Katy threatened to build just parking lot on the Houston area depriving Houston of any real property tax value. For 1 million dollars Katy bought the right to annex the area desired.

While the city government of Katy only serves the area within their city limits, Greater Katy is serviced nearly entirely by entities such as the Katy Independent School District, the Greater Katy Chamber of Commerce, as well as nearly all postal addresses using Katy as the city name. Fire protection services are provided by a consortium of volunteer fire departments (VFDs) while law enforcement is provided by the respective county sheriff’s departments (Harris, Waller, or Fort Bend).