After the Texas Constitution in 1869 directed counties to establish manual-labor poor-houses for indigent and poor inhabitants and for persons committing petty offences, Erath County commissioners created a poor farm in 1881 by purchasing from J.B. Hill a farm in the Smith Springs community four miles from the county courthouse for $650. The property included homes for paupers and a superintendent, a water well, and a barred building for convict laborers, and John Zimmerman, the first superintendent, was paid $40 per month to manage it. Operating for more than fifty years, the farm produced cotton, peanuts, and other crops, while area doctors usually provided medical care without a fee and county funds paid for medicine. The county also provided coffins upon death and set aside a cemetery on the property, though no records have been found identifying the residents or those buried there. In the 1930s, New Deal programs improved living conditions for many Americans and ended the need for poor farms. After the Erath County Poor Farm closed, its last caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Swanzy, took several remaining residents to property they owned near Huckabay. A tornado destroyed most of the buildings in 1935, and in 1939 county commissioners deeded the 260-acre site to Texas A&M for use as an experimental agricultural station. In the 1980s, boy scout troops began restoring the cemetery and marking unidentified graves with crosses, and the Erath County Poor Farm Cemetery Association continued that work.