- City:
- Coleman, TX
- Site Type:
- Schools, Education and Health
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Started:
- 1939
- Completed:
- 1940
- Quality of Information:
- Moderate
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
$76,116 WPA Project Slated for Coleman.
Improvements to the extend of $76,116 will be made on Coleman city schools and campuses during the next 12 months, according to an announcement made today.
Of that amount the WPA is expected to expend $58,097. It will require 112 men a total of a year to complete the work outlined In a project. The area WPA office has given its approval to the project and other approval is expected within a short time.
Improvements to the campus athletic fields, and buildings; rubble masonry walls, concrete curbs and gutters and sidewalks, paved play areas and courts, and amphitheater, an entrance to Hufford Field, a keepers house, floodlights, landscaping, etc. are included in the “blanket” project.
Source notes
Abilene Reporter-News April 25, 1939
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/27100719/coleman_school_improvements/
Site originally submitted by Eveline Evans on January 11, 2019.
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John W Flores
I am a published author in Albuquerque, NM, but used to live in Coleman and my mother attended the Old Coleman High and she loved the school and the town. I want to donate money for restoration. Let me know how to do that. I also want to write a story about the old school for a magazine. I am published widely–across the U.S. and elsewhere. Can sent clips.
The above mentioned WPA project was not for the purpose of improving the Coleman High School building or its campus. This project was in reference to the building of the rock wall around the Coleman High School Hufford Field, which was begun in 1939 or 1940. Hufford Field is approximately ten blocks south of the 1926 Coleman High School on South Neches Street.
Hufford Field was a combination football field, track, tennis courts and baseball field. The stadium was named in honor of C. H. Hufford, the superintendent who had served Coleman High School for seventeen years at the time of the field’s completion. The complex covered a four square block area, surrounded by a rock wall and was bounded by West Fifth Street on the north, South Neches Street on the east, Clow Street on the west and West Seventh Street on the south. The athletic complex was built in 1936, but the rock wall erected around the field was not completed until 1942. There were two additional blocks to the east, outside of the Hufford Field rock wall, where Coleman Junior High School was built in 1951. From 1936 to 1947, Hufford Field was used by both the CHS football team and the Coleman Rodeo Association for rodeos. In 1942, the Coleman Rodeo Association contributed $25 toward the improving of streets around Hufford Field, provided the school board assisted in the project. The Rodeo Association built the stands for the use of the field on land owned by the school district. In 1947 rodeos ceased to be held at Hufford Field with the building of the Coleman Rodeo Arena, south of the city of Coleman.
In January 1941, the WPA released a work order for the completion of a project at Hufford Field. About half of the nine foot rock wall had been completed at that time. Included in the project was the construction of the remainder of a rubble stone wall around the field, paving of tennis courts and installation of flood lights. WPA paid $10,609 on the project while the Coleman Independent School District spent, including credits for material, $3,538 on it. About fifty workers were used on the completion of the project. The picture above right shows the northeast corner in March 1941. The rock wall was completed only to the ticket booth on south side.