Moab Sites

Arches National Monument was established in 1929 with only 4,500 acres and enlarged dramatically to over 33,000 acres by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938 (Arches became a National Park in 1971).  Some of the first improvements to the monument were made by workers of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  CCC camp NP-7 was established in nearby Moab UT in April 1940 and lasted until March 1942, one of the last in the country to be closed. CCC 'boys' worked on roads, trails and erosion control, and notably a headquarters building and bridge over the wash that often blocked access to the...

The present Moab City Center, effectively the City Hall, was originally built to house the Moab elementary school and the Grand County high school.  It was built with a federal grant and cost $135,000.  It was first proposed in May 1933, according to local newspaper reports, and dedicated in December 1934. Firmage (1996, p. 275) claims that it was built with Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds, but this appears to be a classic confusion between the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the WPA – which did not yet exist in 1933-34. PWA funded the neighboring Carbon County Courthouse, so it is likely that...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was quite active in Grand County, Utah.  Four CCC camps were established in and around Moab, the county seat.  The first was the Warner Lake Camp, F-20, in 1933 under the US Forest Service, which also ran camp PE-214.  These camps worked principally on road construction and flood control on Mill Creek.   The biggest and longest lived of the CCC camps in the county was the Dalton Wells Camp, DG-32, running from 1935 to 1941.  That camp operated under the Division of Grazing of the General Land Office (predecessor of the Bureau of Land Management), working around...

The Grand County courthouse was completed in June 1937 and dedicated on July 2.  It cost $60,000, with half the money coming from the Public Works Administration (PWA) and half from local bonds (Firmage, p. 289).  It is still in use as a courthouse.  

A substantial waterworks and sewer system construction project was undertaken in Moab, Utah during the Great Depression with the assistance of federal Public Works Administration (PWA) funds. The PWA provided a $32,000 loan and $13,118 outright grant to the community for the project, whose total cost was $49,391. Construction occurred between December 1934 and May 1935. PWA Docket No. UT 1951 On January 4, 1934, the Times-Independent newspaper reported that the Moab water/sewer project had been approved by federal officials, which also funded the Moab public school building and Grand County courthouse.  Local voters had previously approved a bond issue in support of...