Standing on the site of the preceding 1880s calaboose, the old Somervell County Jail in 1934 represented the height of modernity in criminal confinement. By the 1930s the fifty-year old original jail had outlived its usefulness, but financial constraints of low tax collections duing the Great Depression delayed its replacement. In 1933 newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make available the first federal funds ever allocated to create jobs for unemployed Americans. It funneled the money through state welfare departments to local governments for public works projects. Somervell County applied for and received $1,600 to pay workers to build a new jail, with the county providing the construction materials. This stone and concrete structure included quarters for the sheriff and his family downstairs, and upstairs were the old iron cells, recycled from the former jail, for the prisoners. It served local incarceration needs until 1984, when the new Somervell County Law Enforcement Center took its place.