La Reunion, Texas
The socialist writings of Charles Fournier were the impetus for Frenchman Victor Prosper Considerant to create what he envisioned as a socialist utopian enclave in Texas after he was exiled from France. After selecting the area near the Trinity River in present day Dallas, Considerant went back to Europe to recruit potential colonists from French, German, and Swiss followers of Fournier there. The area already contained several hundred setters when Considerant directed an agent to purchase the site of the colony for him.
Considerant recruited around two hundred colonists and arrived near Houston in 1855, journeying to the site of the new colony overland on foot and by oxcart. The chosen site was ill-suited for farming, and most of the new arrivals were not farmers, but watchmakers, manufacturers, brewers, and weavers, unable to create produce to sustain themselves. At the same time they increased the local population by more than half, increasing the pressure on the local environment to sustain them all.
Eventually more than 350 Europeans arrived at La Reunion, which was beginning to fail even as its population grew. The crops which were planted suffered from insufficient husbandry and the vagaries of the weather. Drought and grasshopper infestations destroyed the rest. With not enough food to sustain the population, people left at a faster rate than they arrived.
The colonists had invested in the development of the colony with an expectation of receiving a return as the experiment prospered. Instead many were faced with a total loss of their investment and insufficient food. As more of the colonists left the cost of recruiting new members increased and the downward spiral accelerated.
La Reunion was formally dissolved as a socialist utopian community in January 1857. In 1860 what remained of the settlement was absorbed into Dallas. The utopian community existed for less than two years. It was later discovered that the community had been built atop a large deposit of limestone, which was quarried as Texas grew. The colony cemetery remains, but none of the buildings erected by the colonists survive.