The purpose of this paper is to determine the subsoil depth affected from the load on the plate resting on elastic foundation using stress distribution within the subsoil that will be occurred depending on the loading and dimension of the plate. An iterative method is developed in order to determine the effective depth of the subsoil under the plate. Numerical examples from the technical literature are solved by means of the method suggested herein and displacements, bending moments and shear forces are presented in graphical and tabular forms to evaluate the effects of the limit depth considered in the study. Results showed the efficiency and simplicity of the present approach for the plate resting on an elastic foundation.