The Best Dentists in Paris, Texas

Both dentists grew up here, which in a town this size is a real credential rather than a marketing line. Clint Spencer is a North Lamar High School graduate who took his bachelor's at Harding University and his DDS at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, graduating magna cum laude with awards from the Academy of Operative Dentistry and the Teledyne Hanau prize in prosthodontics. Cliff Kerby is a Paris High School graduate with a business degree from Abilene Christian and a DDS from Texas A&M's Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas, also magna cum laude.

Two dentists under one roof is the practical advantage. A cracked molar on a Tuesday does not sit for ten days waiting on one person's schedule to open. Kerby is licensed to provide enteral sedation, the oral route rather than IV, which covers most of what keeps people out of the chair for a decade at a time, and he works with the King's Daughters charity providing dental care to low income residents of Lamar County.

Ross Williams is a Paris ISD graduate who took a biochemistry degree at Texas Tech and his DDS at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, then came home to practice. He renamed the office from his own name to Oak Creek Family Dental, and told a practice management publication the reason was a plan to expand rather than a change of ownership, so older listings under "Ross Williams, DDS" are the same place.

The public review record here runs to several hundred entries on a single platform, which is far more than any other dentist in a town of about 25,000 has accumulated. We do not publish star averages, because the aggregators disagree, but volume that far ahead of the field tells you most of Paris has either been here or knows somebody who has. It is a Lamar County Chamber member.

Jamie Smith took her DDS at the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry in 2010, then served twelve years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, finishing in 2022 as a lieutenant colonel and Chief of Dental Services at Tinker Air Force Base. That is the most checkable single record of any dentist practicing in Paris, and it is the kind of job that means a very high volume of routine and surgical work under supervision.

What matters week to week is the IV sedation and the third molar extractions done on site. Most general practices in a town this size send wisdom teeth to an oral surgeon in Plano, Tyler or Dallas, which is two round trips, one for the consult and one for the surgery, plus the days off work. Not making that drive is worth real money.

Brandon Del Toro took his DDS at the University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, and the practice publishes the longest menu of any office in Paris. Implants, implant dentures, bone and gum grafting, Invisalign, sedation dentistry, veneers, whitening, wisdom tooth extraction and full arch work are all listed on its own site, alongside a set of Spanish-language pages, which no other general practice here publishes.

Breadth cuts both ways. An office that advertises everything is convenient when you need two unrelated things done, and it is worth asking how often a specific procedure is actually performed before you commit to it. There is a BBB file on the business, but BBB states it has insufficient information to issue a rating, so treat that as neutral rather than as a mark either way.

This is the practice that solves the hardest dental problem in a rural county, which is not finding a good dentist but finding one who will file your coverage. Its own site lists Medicaid, CHIP and PPO plans, and its practice profile describes serving a large share of underserved patients across Texas. Very few private general practices in Northeast Texas take Medicaid at all, so this one carries a load out of proportion to its size.

It runs as a multi-dentist group under John Norwood, DDS, covering preventive, restorative and cosmetic work for all ages. We rank it fifth rather than higher only because its published record on service specifics is thinner than the four above, not because access matters less. For a family on CHIP it is the first call, full stop.

Elwyn Lee Crawford, who goes by Lee, runs one of only a handful of Paris practices that is actually open five full weekdays. Nearly everything else in town closes Friday or runs half days at both ends of the week, so when a filling comes out on a Thursday night the field of offices that can see you the next morning is very short. This is on it.

The work is general and cosmetic dentistry, whitening, implants and veneers, and the practice states it accepts most traditional insurance plans, cash, check and cards, plus a flexible payment plan for larger cases. It sits on the same stretch of Pine Mill Road as Spencer and Kerby, roughly across the street.

Bart W. Hays, DDS runs a full general list here, extractions, fillings, whitening, wisdom teeth, veneers, root canals, dentures and clear aligners, from an address a lot of Paris families have been going to for years. It is a Lamar County Chamber member and it is listed as accepting new patients.

The complication worth knowing is the paperwork trail. The same address and phone were filed for years as Easlon Dental Town under Regina D. Easlon, DDS, and directories still carry both names, plus a third variant, Stone Avenue Dental Associates. That is a practice succession showing its age in the record rather than two competing offices.

Thomas D. Calabria, DDS is a Baylor College of Dentistry graduate in general practice on the north end of Lamar Avenue, listed by the American Dental Association's Find-a-Dentist directory, by the Lamar County Chamber and by every major provider database. He is listed as accepting new patients and as offering telehealth consultations, which is unusual for a solo office here.

He is also one of the few dentists in Paris running a full Monday to Friday schedule. The reason this sits eighth rather than higher is simply that we could find no practice website, so there is no published service list, no fee policy and no team page to check anything against. That is a documentation gap, not a judgment on the dentistry.

Nathan E. Hodges, DDS, MS holds the specialty training that no general dentist in town does, and the practice has been established since 2003. The equipment list matches the specialty rather than padding it out, a 3D cone beam CT scanner for implant planning, digital radiography, and a Perioscope for treating gum disease without cutting.

The work is implants, bone grafting to rebuild what periodontal disease took, gum recession treatment, cosmetic gum work, extractions with sedation, and same-day full arch restoration. Dr. Thomas D. Charbeneau is also listed as a periodontist at this address.

Shaneka Scott took a biology degree at the University of Texas at Austin and her DDS at Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas in 2011, and bought this practice in 2016. She holds memberships in the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, the American Dental Association, the Texas Dental Association, the First District Dental Society and the American Orthodontic Society.

We describe it the way the practice describes itself, as a general dental practice with a focus on children rather than a board certified pediatric specialty office. That distinction matters if your child has a complex medical history. For the ordinary case, a first cleaning, sealants, a chipped front tooth, this is the room in Paris set up for it, and it lists experience treating patients with special needs.