The first person to make Almere her home died at the weekend at the age of 90 local broadcaster Omroep Flevoland reported.

Lia de Clerk moved from Amsterdam to the newly created town of Almere in Flevoland in 1976 and was the first person to receive the key to her home at Schoolwerf, along with 24 other new inhabitants.

“It was bucketing down, it was terrible. And then you open the door and there’s your new home. And you’re just really happy,” De Clerk said in interviews. Reportedly, De Clerk was particularly pleased her two daughters had bedrooms of their own.

In 2013 the pioneering family was given a tile in the Almeerse Walk of Fame and in 2016 De Clerk and the 200,000th inhabitant of Almere went to The Hague to celebrate the city’s success.

Almere is situated in reclaimed land, at two to five metres below sea level. Designed to take the overspill from Amsterdam, it currently has some 223,183 inhabitants, making it the eighth biggest Dutch city.