Arkansas Valley Fairgrounds Stables – Rocky Ford CO

Description

“The stables, constructed in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), are an important record of the federal relief programs administered on Colorado’s eastern plains during the Great Depression. The stables were one of a series of WPA improvement projects at the Arkansas Valley Fairgrounds that provided a significant source of employment. It is the best surviving example of WPA work in Rocky Ford. The WPA used adobe for many of its eastern Colorado projects as it was both inexpensive and labor intensive—a good fit with the agency’s objectives to ensure that most of the money went to labor rather than materials. As most adobe was stuccoed, the exposed adobe walls of
the stables allow an uncommon opportunity to examine the
construction methods more closely. The stables, a rare
example of exposed adobe WPA construction, remained in
use until the 1990s.”   (www.historycolorado.org)