The frame Waverly School (1890), on the south side of Colorado 370, and the Christian Reformed Church, on the north side, are still the nucleus for the widely scattered remnants of what became a New Deal settlement. The San Luis Valley Farms project, one of 149 such projects nationwide, resettled farmers hard hit by the Depression. The federal government constructed irrigation ditches and laterals and built farmsteads on 80- or 160-acre parcels. These eighty-six farm sites, interspersed among privately owned farms, attracted families, primarily from southeastern Colorado, between 1938 and 1940. Each family received a house with running water and REA electricity, as well as a barn, a shed-roofed chicken house, a hog house, and an outhouse.
The basic dwelling was a single-story, three-bedroom frame structure on a concrete foundation with drop siding under a cross-gable roof. A small wooden porch sheltered the main entrance, and twelve-pane, double-hung windows were standard. Some of these simple rectangular houses can still be seen, although most have been altered.