Buckeye is a place where the best breakfast in town is right on Main Street, where a man still feels comfortable leaving his car running as he jets inside a corner store.

It's a place where you tell someone to meet you at "the Sonic" because there's only one.

Signs, though, hint things soon will be sharply different for a town that could someday be as large as Phoenix. The acres of empty land are filling up with plats for homes that will make up more than 30 master-planned communities like Verrado. Town Council meetings provide standing room only and are filled with developers holding poster boards with more plans for Buckeye's future. The numbers say the town could have 1 million people by 2025, up from about 25,000 now.

The most current manifestation of the town's growth is happening now as Buckeye prepares to annex 108 square miles, which would increase the town's size by a third. It would be one of the largest municipal annexations in Arizona's history.

But the vast land is not planned for bricks and mortar of retail development. Instead, town leaders want to set it aside for parks and recreation, filled with trails where horses can roam and families can hike. The Federal Bureau of Land Management owns most of the property, which includes the town's entire southeastern planning area.

"I think the real meaning of this won't be known for a number of years until we have everything where we want it and people realize that we've lost the rest of the desert," new Mayor Bobby Bryant said. "Then, they will still have this."

At 230 square miles now, Buckeye already is larger than Tucson, Mesa and Seattle. Even one of the town's planned communities, Douglas Ranch, is 55 square miles, larger than Tempe.

The proposed annexation would put Buckeye closer to its planning area of 600-plus square miles and further away from its past as a sleepy, rural community.

"Most people don't have any idea how big Buckeye is," said Bob Bushfield, its community development director. "If we continue to annex all the property around, we will be every bit as big as Phoenix."

Each land mass added into the town represents another piece of the puzzle, in a game where the goal is to shape Buckeye into a major Valley player.

It's a big job for a community that had about 8,000 residents in 2000, a place trying to find medium ground between preserving land and mom-and-pop businesses and luring big corporations.

Bushfield knows the pressure.

He is responsible for crunching numbers for Buckeye's population projections and for a staff handling projects ranging from the town's first Wal-Mart to Tartesso, a minicity that will include 40,000 homes and a town center.

Bushfield joined the town a year ago after working in the community development department in Scottsdale. In Buckeye, his department helps decide where major shopping corridors should land and what it will take to provide water, sewer and transportation to someday serve a huge population.

Buckeye residents such as Karla Walters, who grew up in the town, are along for the ride, fighting to preserve Buckeye's roots as developments pour in.

On Saturday, Walters is leading an effort to move her childhood historic home to Main Street, saving it from demolition.

"Buckeye has a lot of history and has been around so long," she said. "With all the new development coming in, that's so easily forgotten. We want to make sure people can be part of a huge city but still have the hometown atmosphere."

Town officials have no plans for development on the land to be annexed. They say it would be a key spot where Arizona's history would be preserved for generations. More specific plans for parkland will be made as annexation discussions progress.

"I've been stating for several years that we have beautiful recreation opportunities in the town of Buckeye," said Jeanine Guy, interim town manager. "When you have new developments coming in, now is the time to make sure we have those trails and connections rather than waiting for later."

Many are watching the process of a small town planning its future. Even a graduate class at Arizona State University is focusing on Buckeye's intense growth.

"The challenges are supreme for these individuals trying to do the planning and development," said Mary Kihl, a professor of planning at ASU who works with the class. "You can't really wait for the housing development to create the commercial. You really have to think about everything simultaneously."

Build-out projections show Buckeye's population at 2 million, a number close to Phoenix's, by 2030. Some spectators question the relevance of size.

"Two decades from now, the measure of a great city won't be determined by square miles or population but by its ability to sustain a good quality of life," Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said. "Phoenix has already figured that out. That is why I have set a goal to be Number 1 in sustainability, whether we're third, fourth or 10th in size."

Buckeye leaders are confident they're taking the right steps. Next, they will take annexation plans to the town's development board, which will make a recommendation to the Town Council within two months.

Bushfield, like the rest of the swamped staff at the town's headquarters, is working multiple 12-hours days to make sure the annexation and other plans clear every hurdle.

"I don't think you could ever anticipate the kind of growth going on here," he said. "It's one of those jobs that you wish you were a lot younger, so you could see more and more of this.

"I say to people, we may have a disagreement on how long it will take to achieve the population, but eventually that's what it will be. Those are just conservative estimates."