The History of DeSoto, Texas

Settlement here goes back to 1847, just eleven years after Texas won independence from Mexico, when the Parks, Cheshier, Ramsey, and Johnson families took up land — Parks generally reckoned the first, his grant the seed the community grew around. Around 1848, T.J. Johnson, newly arrived from Tennessee, built a small general store near the crossroads, giving the settlement a center. One local footnote: the Ramseys' daughter Mary, born in 1846, was said to be the first White child born west of the Trinity River, and she lived in the area to the age of 94.

When the post office was established in 1884, the settlement was named DeSoto — and the reason has never been fully settled. One account credits the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto. The other, more personal, credits a local resident named Dr. Thomas Hernando DeSoto Stewart, a physician remembered for his devotion to the community. Either way, the name stuck to what remained a small farming community in the black-dirt country south of Dallas.

DeSoto incorporated as a city in 1949, and as Dallas grew south it became one of the four suburbs — with Cedar Hill, Duncanville, and Lancaster — known collectively as the Best Southwest. DeSoto grew into a leading community in the southern sector, with a strong professional and middle-class base and steady residential growth. The crossroads store is long gone, but DeSoto remains a well-established anchor of the metro's southern side.