Detour

I don't do it often enough, but I know I should--detour for historical marker signs. I mean, it is my business, knowing the fun and undiscovered places in my corner of the state.

Usually I'm on a mission, just like everyone else on the road, with appointments looming, no time for wandering and a vague sense that getting there is not as much fun as BEING there.

So last week, I devoted a day just to wandering and photographing the rural way into El Paso that is part of a cross-country cycling route, Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier, wanting to document it for a promotional project later on. I traveled really remote backroads; through fields growing chile, pecans, alfalfa. I saw farm laborers working just in front of the new international border fence. I drove through towns that really were no more; and towns just hanging on.

As I approached the city, there was the usual offensive buildup of strip malls, and then large shopping centers and intense traffic. Here on the outskirts of El Paso, the signs were in Spanish, and really, truly, it didn't feel like the U.S. Just off the road, I knew there were Colonias--Spanish neighborhoods--and in this area traditionally lagging behind in public services such as potable water, sewer, paved roads, and sometimes electricity.

So when the historical marker came to view, I turned from the main road. I didn't have to go far to see the marker--actually two of them--one in English, one in Spanish. It stood in front of the building (first photo) with a sort of campus behind. The marker read:

El Paso County's second poor farm, known as the El Paso Poor Farm, was established here in 1915. John O'Shea, a wealthy farmer and businessman whose farm was nearby, assumed operation of the farm. His wife, Agnes O'Shea, was in charge of the residents. John O'Shea died in 1929, and the couple's daughter, Helen O'Shea Keleher, came from her home in San Antonio to operate the farm with her mother.

The farm was scheduled to be closed in 1929, but, with the troubled times of the Depression era, its population grew. Renamed "Rio Vista Farm," the poor farm hosted a variety of public welfare programs beginning in the 1930s. It operated under the Texas Transient Bureau and later the Federal Works Progress Administration. A temporary base for a Civilian Conservation Corps unit in 1936, the farm continued to shelter hundreds of homeless and destitute adults and children.

From 1951 to 1964, the farm was used as a reception and processing center for the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican laborers to work in the lower valley of El Paso and other agricultural areas in the U.S. New federal welfare programs and state law reduced the population of the poor farm to four, and it was closed in 1964. Unlike other Texas county poor farms, Rio Vista followed a familial rather than institutional model, accepting neglected and abandoned children in addition to the adult indigent population. In later life, Helen O'Shea Keleher cited the fifty years she spent with the more than four thousand orphans and neglected children of the Rio Vista Poor Farm as her proudest accomplishment.

It seemed untouched. It was easy to imagine waves of the poor, the CCC and Bracero workers, washing at the outdoor sinks, bunking in the dormitories, relaxing in the shade. A gentleman came out of the first building, saw my camera and encouraged me to wander around. He gave me his card--he was the director of the community center housed at the Farm. They were trying to renovate the buildings so they could establish satellite offices for social service agencies, but it was hard to find money. He invited me inside, where I interrupted a "senior lunch." Tiny old men in cowboy hats lined up for a small meal of sandwich, salad and packaged jello.

As I wandered around, I saw they were holding English classes, and a sign on one door said, "SE CANCELA LA CLASA DE COMPUTER POR EL DIA DE HOY JUNIO 18 2009."

But there was something that didn't seem to fit, a large aging archway in the center of the campus. And it didn't fit. Turns out that arch was built a few years ago, as a set for the filming of the movie, "Traffic," the Stephen Soderbergh movie starring Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Benicio del Torro.

Less than a mile from the frenzy of the road was, well, "Traffic," and a detour worth taking. I should make time more often.