CCC Project at Pocahontas State Park Historic District Added to the Virginia State Registry

Pocahontas State Park


Pocahontas State Park  SourceImperial Multimedia, 2015

The Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) recently named the 7600-acre Pocahontas State Park, one of Virginia’s largest Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) projects, to the Virginia Landmarks Registry (VLR). The DHR said that all of the park, along with two other new listings in the VLR, will be forwarded to the National Park Service for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

 

Originally known as Swift Creek Recreational Demonstration Area (RDA), Pocahontas State Park was just one of two RDAs completed in the state as part of the larger Federal Emergency Land Relief Program, initiated in 1934. The park, located twenty miles from Richmond, was “the first recreational park in the Richmond-Petersburg-Hopewell area.” As the Petersburg Progress-Index reports, according to the DHR, Pocahontas State Park is unique in Virginia as the “only state park specifically designed for use by large groups.” Come visit–and bring your friends!

 

 

This post was submitted by Robert Krause, an Historic Preservation Planner with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in United States History from the University of Mississippi in 2010, with an emphasis on Environmental and Public History. Dr. Krause has worked as a curator, historian, and preservationist in federal, state, and local government agencies since 2001. Krause grew up in Bozeman, Montana, and his grandfather and great-uncle were enrollees in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

is Project Manager for The Living New Deal. He is a trained cultural historian who teaches courses in U.S. History at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.

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