De Kalb was named for Maj. Gen. Johann de Kalb, a hero of the American Revolution, on the 1836 suggestion of David Crockett as he traveled to fight in the Texas War for Independence. Other Texas heroes who passed through were James B. Fannin and Wm. B. Travis. It was settled by 1831, when Dr. W. H. Boyce, Wm. L. Browning, D. M. Chisholm, Clement R. Johns, and Judge and Dr. James W. Smith gave land for a public school. It became the site of the first college in Bowie County, founded in 1839, and of the Ninth Masonic Lodge in Texas, organized in 1840. It served as county seat from 1840 to 1841, lay on two early stagelines, and was a stopover for U.S. immigrants to the Texas Republic and for forty-niners on their way to the California gold rush. In the 1870s, hideouts of train robbers Sam Bass, Jesse James, and other notorious characters were nearby. The Texas and Pacific Railroad reached De Kalb in 1876. In 1889, P. S. Ramseur's sawmill was established here and shipped high quality lumber across the United States; to bring logs to the mill, he built a railroad whose traces still exist. Although fires destroyed most of the businesses in 1896 and 1923, the city prospers as a center of ranching, truck farming, and pulpwood production and is known as "The Pride of East Texas."