Sunflower Village Historic District

About this property

De Soto is a city along the Kansas River, in Johnson and Leavenworth counties in the U.S. state of Kansas, and part of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 6,118, and the 2025 estimate is 7,083. The land that would become De Soto was part of a large territory extending to present-day St. Louis that was occupied by the Osage people, who were relocated from east of the Mississippi River in the upper Midwest. After the Treaty of St Louis in 1825, the Shawnee were forcibly relocated from Cape Girardeau to southeastern Kansas near the Neosho River. Only the Black Bob band of Shawnee resisted removal, however by 1828 they too migrated west and settled in northeastern Kansas in and around De Soto along the Kansas River. Later in the 19th century, many cultures of Native Americans arrived in the area after being pushed west by European-American pressure following colonial expansion and later the discovery of Gold in 1849. Between 1829 and 1854 almost thirty tribes were assigned reservations in what would become Kansas Territory. The Shawnee Methodist Mission was built in the De Soto area to minister to the tribe. A reserve was established in Kansas and soon other Shawnee from as far east as Ohio would join the reservation. The Agency of the Shawnee Indians, also known as Lexington, was located on the southern edge of the city. The city of De Soto was platted in the spring of 1857, named for sixteenth-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. In 1858, John Possum, a Shawnee man, and Hattie Possum sold 80 acres (32 ha) to John F. Legate, S. Todd and Stratton and Williams for $1,200. The next sale was 80 acres to the De Soto Town Company in July 1861 for $1,176. Major James B. Abbot is remembered as one of the town's pioneer landowners and the builder of Abbot Hall. Today, Abbot Hall is one of two town museums. De Soto was incorporated as a city on October 1, 1897. With the construction of the 9,080-acre (3,670 ha) Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant south of De Soto, the city's population boomed in the early 1940s during World War II. In May 1943, a Kansas City Star article reported "a town rapidly growing, with a population increase from 400 to 1,000 persons in under a year." This sudden overflow in population put a great strain on housing and other resources in the city; however, many original residents prospered during this time, buying property and starting new businesses. Production flowed steadily at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant until the plant went on standby in March 1948, with small-scale production following shortly after until its closure in 1993.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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