Rio Vista Farm Historic District

Rio Vista Farm began in 1915 when El Paso County bought land near Socorro and established a poor farm on part of it. The brick Main Building, with a cruciform plan of four angled wings around a central core, shows Prairie School influence and once housed inmates in separate wards. In 1935 the Texas Transient Bureau and the Works Progress Administration added a quadrangle of adobe buildings called Camp Rio Vista. Plans were drawn by E.R. Nilson. The buildings have stucco finishes, curvilinear Mission Revival parapets and canopies linking them, and include a mess hall, dormitories, offices, an infirmary and a school. The camp sheltered unemployed workers during the Depression and put them to work farming county land. Of 21 original buildings, 17 survive with enough integrity to count as contributing. Later additions, including a 1952 superintendent's residence now used as a sheriff's substation, do not contribute. Cotton fields still surround the complex and keep its early twentieth-century rural setting.