On November 21, 1945, on a stretch of U.S. Highway 80 east of Dallas, two hundred residents of a small Texas community christened the new highway sign with a bottle of milk, read aloud a congratulatory letter from the new president, and changed the town's name to Truman — for Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States. The community had been called Thin Gravy. Before that, Deanville. Before that, North Mesquite, and Mesquite Tap. When Vice President Truman succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, the two hundred residents of the East Dallas County crossroads put the question to a vote, and the highway sign that marked their place on the map became the announcement. Harry S. Truman never personally visited the town that named itself for him, as far as the record shows. But the letter he sent was read aloud at the christening, and his name went up over U.S. 80. He went on to serve through January 20, 1953 — presiding over the end of World War II in the Pacific, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, the recognition of the State of Israel, the Berlin Airlift, the Truman Doctrine, and the desegregation of the United States Armed Forces. The small town named for him sat on the prairie east of Dallas, a few miles from the 1871 Florence Ranch and the farmstead today preserved as Opal Lawrence Historical Park — the older Mesquite prairie heritage that the U.S. Highway 80 era grew out of. In the 1950s the adjacent City of Mesquite absorbed the Truman community, and the name lived on as the neighborhood at the corner of the highway. In 2007 the City of Mesquite adopted the Truman Heights Neighborhood Plan, formally defining the surviving Truman footprint by its three borders — U.S. Highway 80 to the south, North Galloway Avenue to the east, and Hillcrest Street to the west — with Hillview Drive and Stephenson Drive running through the interior. The two hundred residents are gone. The milk bottle is gone. The highway sign has been replaced more than once. The name is still there.
Truman, Texas, began as a small East Dallas County stop along the old U.S. Highway 80 corridor — a crossroads of farms, creeks, and wagon traces on the prairie edge east of Dallas. The earlier names — Thin Gravy, Deanville, North Mesquite, and Mesquite Tap — hinted at humor, settlers, and rail sidings before the pavement came through. Families worked cotton and truck patches, traded at crossroads stores, and watched Dallas's growth approach from the west. After the wartime years, local identity sharpened around a renamed signboard and a sense of being seen. The place's founding character blended modest acreage, roadside commerce, and neighborly ritual along a hard-traveled highway shoulder.
Why People Visit Truman Texas
Truman is small, and that is the point. The town that named itself Thin Gravy, then Deanville, then North Mesquite, then Mesquite Tap, then Truman — for the new president — christened its U.S. Highway 80 sign with a bottle of milk on November 21, 1945, and got its name in the papers. The 33rd President of the United States never visited, but he sent the letter that was read at the christening, and the highway carried his name through East Dallas County while he carried the country through the end of the Pacific war, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and the desegregation of the United States Armed Forces. Today Truman Heights is the neighborhood corner where Mesquite preserved the name in the 2007 Truman Heights Neighborhood Plan. It is the smallest historical credential in Merlin Classics — the tiniest town with a presidential namesake on the federal-highway map — and that is exactly why it earns the longhorn-and-star.
