A brief Hstory of DeSoto County
Courtesy of the DeSoto County Geneological Society
Depression Days
On October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Market crashed, sending the whole country into a deep depression that bottomed out in July 1932. Little money in circulation, farm foreclosure notices and delinquent taxes were the order of the day in DeSoto County as in all other rural areas. However, the country people had the advantage of knowing how to produce food.
With the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt as the new president of the United States in 1933, the country began to slowly work its way out of the Depression. Numerous public works programs afforded employment at the local level. The Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, set a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour for a 45 hour work week. Beginning in 1935, controversial social security laws to give pensions to the aged, and aid the unemployed and the infirm were enacted.
A Works Progress Administration (WPA) project of 1935, established a DeSoto County Public Library. When the Federal money for this project stopped the county continued a small yearly appropriation to keep the library alive. When the new courthouse was built in 1940, a room was designated for the library which consisted of the leftover books from WPA days.
In 1940 a fire that lasted all night destroyed the beloved "French Castle Courthouse." Just as the county was beginning to recover from the deep financial depression many citizens could not see having to rebuild. The first proposal for a bond issue failed. The plans went back to the drawing board for a little trimming and the next bond issue passed. This building, the central part of the present courthouse, was so handsome that all the county was proud of its beautiful building.
The building of the Arkabutla Dam, begun in 1939, afforded many local men jobs in this momentous project. The dam, completed in 1943, when the country was in the midst of World War II, was not dedicated until the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1993.
