By the 1930s, cotton production in Texas was rapidly shifting from East Texas to West Texas, where displaced sharecroppers and Mexican migrant laborers competed for jobs. The Lamesa Farm Workers Community was one of nine such settlements in Texas constructed by the Farm Security Administration. The community consisted of twenty-five houses for semi-permanent year-round tenants, and twenty-five quadruplex shelters for transient workers open only during the cotton harvest. In addition, a gatehouse, community center, manager’s house, baseball diamond, and playground equipment were provided. All the buildings were of frame construction with wooden siding and were provided with electricity, natural gas, and indoor plumbing. The houses for the year-round farm laborers originally faced the county roads that bounded the site, the quadruplexes were interior to the site, and a gatehouse, community center, and manager’s house were at the west end.
When Lamesa Field was established in 1942 to train glider pilots, some of the units were assigned to construction workers on the base and later to base personnel. In 1947, when the federal government divested itself of all farm labor facilities, the property was sold to Dawson County. It was purchased in 1980 by María and Israel Ybáñez and incorporated as the town of Los Ybáñez in 1982. Although some of the original units did not survive and many are derelict, some have been restored, and Los Ybáñez appears to prosper as a residential community.