Des Peres

Des Peres, MO: A Quiet West County Suburb Built Around Its Parks

Des Peres traces its roots to a Jesuit mission founded around 1700, making it one of the oldest settlements in the state, though you'd never guess it from the quiet, tree-covered streets and six parks packed into just 4.32 square miles today.

Quick facts:

• 4.32 square miles, about 9,193 residents
• Settled around 1700 as a Jesuit mission; incorporated as a town in 1934
• Six city parks plus two conservation areas
• Served by both the Parkway and Kirkwood school districts

The Parks

Des Peres packs six parks and two conservation areas into just over four square miles: Des Peres Park, Harwood Park, Pioneer Park, Sugar Creek Park, and the wooded Phantom Forest and Bittersweet Woods conservation areas. For a small city, that's an unusual amount of green space to maintain, and it shows in how the town feels from the street.

West County Center

West County Center has anchored the city's retail since 1969 and remains one of the region's major shopping destinations, but it's a small piece of a much quieter town. Most of Des Peres is residential streets and parks, not parking lots.

A Little History

Des Peres takes its name from a Jesuit mission founded around 1700, French for "of the Fathers," making it one of the oldest settlements in Missouri, older than the founding of St. Louis itself by more than sixty years. German immigrants and settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas built out the area through the 1800s, and the town wasn't formally incorporated until 1934, by which point the name Des Peres had already been in everyday use for generations.

The Houses

Housing in Des Peres runs toward established single-family homes on quiet, tree-lined streets, the kind of steady, low-turnover suburb where a lot of families stay long past the years their kids are in school.

Who Des Peres Is For

• Families who want Parkway or Kirkwood schools with a quieter, smaller-town feel
• Buyers who want serious park access without leaving the suburbs
• Anyone who wants West County shopping minutes away without living next to it
• Buyers drawn to a town with more history behind it than its size would suggest

Why Work with the Dawn Griffin Group in Des Peres

Partner with a team that's earned it: three-time A-List winner for Best Real Estate Agent in St. Louis (2024, 2025, and 2026), with decades of experience and over 1,000 successful transactions across St. Louis's West County suburbs.