• Dwyer School (former) - Faywood NM
    On August 22, 1935, the Grant County Board of Education submitted a WPA proposal to build a new school in Dwyer, a homesteading community straddling the Mimbres River, 40 miles southeast of the county seat in Silver City. The board had been busy the summer and into the fall, preparing similar project proposals for far-flung rural school districts in the county. It justified the need for the Dwyer school, stating in the application that the original adobe schoolhouse, constructed 30 years prior, “is unsafe and is beyond repair. It is poorly lighted and hard to heat sufficiently for pupils’ needs,” concluding, “a...
  • New Mexico State Police District 1 Campus (former) - Santa Fe NM
    Located on the campus of the New Mexico Department of Transportation is the former New Mexico State Police District 1 office. Constructed as three separate WPA projects between 1935 and 1940, the former State Police campus consists of an administrative building (1935) and a later annex (1939). Both were designed in the regional Pueblo Revival style by Willard C. Krueger, the WPA’s chief architect in New Mexico, who would later design structures for the Manhattan Project. The State Police started humbly in 1905 as the New Mexico Mounted Police, a small division of equestrian officers appointed by the Governor under single...
  • Redrock School (former) - Redrock NM
    On September 11, 1935, the Grant County Board of Education submitted a WPA proposal to build a new school at Redrock, a farming hamlet on the Gila River, approximately 70 miles southwest of the county seat in Silver City. The board had been busy the summer and into the fall, preparing similar project proposals for far-flung rural school districts. Redrock, separated by a mountain from Silver City, was a remote, thinly populated area closer to Lordsburg (32 miles), the county seat of neighboring Hidalgo County. The Board justified the need for a new school at Redrock, stating in the application that the existing...