Kaufman County established a poor farm in 1883, as many Texas counties of the era did, to provide indigent area residents and families with food, shelter, and medicine, replacing earlier relief efforts. All able-bodied persons were required to work, including resident guards and county inmates convicted of minor crimes, who were originally brought daily from the jail for labor and by 1893 were housed on the farm. In the 1930s, the farm was used to demonstrate new agricultural techniques. Usually filled to capacity, it operated until the 1970s. By 1997, a cemetery and a few buildings remained.