In 1937 the State of Texas and Hardeman County worked with President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration to provide much-needed employment to indigent citizens and replace unsanitary privies with improved facilities. These structures helped reduce diseases such as typhoid fever, hookworm and dysentery. The privies featured fly-tight construction and were carefully placed where they could not pollute the water supply. One toilet was placed on this site behind the Hicks & Cobb General Merchandise store. After it was destroyed, another privy was moved from its original location on the Bellamy family property. W. H. Bellamy and his family were founders of Medicine Mound.