Paid for by federal funds, the Historic Post Office building was constructed and opened in 1931. It was built over a small spring in the old city park one block east of the Howell County Courthouse in the West Plains Courthouse Square Historic District. Even though the park had become rundown and neglected for several years and was an eyesore before construction of the post office, the spring was originally where members of the Howell family settled in 1839 becoming the first permanent settlers of European descent in West Plains. Under the building — which previously also served as the town library and is currently a privately owned event center — the spring still runs. It can be viewed under a small pane of plexiglass in the basement. A sign on the building describes the spring site.
West Plains is the county seat of Howell County, namesake of that pioneer family. In the early to mid-1800s “hardly a stick of timber grew within sight of the spring, only tall blue stem prairie grass.” This historical note offers the reason for our town’s eventual name, based on “the plains west of Thomasville,” a neighboring Oregon County community which was established with a post office in 1846, two years before West Plains gained its post office in 1848.