Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Sites

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp at Elk River, Idaho, in 1933. It was designated as Camp F-133 (a Forest Service camp). Elk River is a small town in mid-panhandle Idaho, west of the Clearwater Range. The main activities of the CCC enrollees were probably tree planting and road work. We know from the attached photograph that the camp was active in 1934 and CCC company 1238 had been installed there. Elk River campground near the village of Elk Creek looks to have been built by the CCC and might be on the location of the former CCC camp. It...

Located on CCC Road, the Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Greenbrier was set up on private land in Hines, Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Camp Greenbrier was under W.V. Division of Forestry and occupied by Company 1539, 6/23/1933 - 8/30/1935 and Company 2593, 7/1/1935 - 1/11/1936.

Situated near Greenwood Lake in upper West Milford, NJ, Camp Hope was initially developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Company 1201 as Camp S-68 to house workers working at the Newark Waterworks. Following the closure of the worker’s barracks, the cabins sat abandoned for roughly two years. Freedmen Ernest T. Scheidemenn pushed for the County of Passaic to grant them access to the cabins at Smith Mills (now West Milford) instead of demolishing them to turn them into a children’s summer recreation camp “for the undernourished and underprivileged children of Passaic County.” (Paterson News, February 7, 1938, 1) After being...

Located on the original Bankhead Highway, also known as the Villa Rica-Carrollton Road (1917 route) the Williams Family farm is southwest of Villa Rica, Georgia. The farmhouse was built in 1891 and the farm remained in business in the Great Depression. In the 1930s, Felix Williams with the assistance of the Carroll County Commissioner went to Washington, DC to lobby for a CCC camp on the farm. Their efforts were award a camp on 18 August1935. A portion of the farm was leased to the CCC. In 1936 the CCC built a road from the Carrollton-Villa Rica Road to the...

Now used as a 4H summer camp, this site was originally built as Camp P-216 by the CCC. The CCC did experimental tree plantings as well as building a fire station and a pool "for firefighting purposes." The fire station is still there.

A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp was established at Capitola, just east of Santa Cruz,  for the purpose of working on nearby California beach state parks, such as New Brighton, Capitola, and Sea Cliff.  The California state parks system had only been created c 1930, so all these beach parks needed work on recreational facilities.  It was officially camp SP-24 (for State Parks) and was active in the late 1930s, but we do not have exact dates.  We know that Company 5447 arrived there in late 1937, when the camp already existed, and worked there for some time on local parks....

Seeley Lake is one link in a chain of five lakes nestled between the lofty Swan and Mission mountain ranges in western Montana. Two hundred acres of ancient larch trees surround the area, which has drawn visitors since the early 1900s. In 1924, the USDA Forest Service granted a permit to the Western Montana Council of Boy Scouts to construct a summer camp. The facility was originally a tent camp but by the late 1930s there was need for a more permanent facility. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), New Deal programs vital to the...

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp S-59-Md was located in what is known today as Swallow Falls State Park, Oakland, Maryland.  It was the home of CCC Company 304. The work of Company 304 included road construction and firefighting.  From the park’s main parking lot, three CCC-built structures can be seen today – the park office, pavilion, and stone restroom. At nearby Herrington Manor State Park, the men of Company 304 built a dam & lake, cabins, bathhouse and more. These structures are still in use. The enrollees of Company 304 produced the camp newspaper Youghiogheny Digest (pronounced yaa-kuh-gay-nee). Numerous editions of it can be found at...

Located on the outskirts of the Sequoia National Park, Camp Salt Creek was constructed on October 12, 1937 by Company 5449, SNP-10. The type of work done at Camp Salt Creek was fire prevention, construction of horse and truck trails, highway maintenance, & building and maintaining communication systems. Company 5449 of note captured 117 rattlesnakes that were sent to the Biological Survey in Washington DC. The Company was originally formed in May 1936 at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. After training, moved to West Augusta Virginia May 27, 1937 to take over Camp NF-3-VA from the 2357th Company in Ramsey's Draft in George Washington...

The CCC operated a camp in Savage in the 1930s. In the early 1940s it was used as a Military Intelligence Service Language School for training Japanese-American soldiers.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Sisters (F-110, Company #1454) at Camp Sherman, Oregon operated near the headwaters of the Metolius River in Jefferson County from 1933 to 1942. It was just one of the average 60 CCC camps that worked each year in the state during that period. Originally planned to be near Sisters, Oregon rather than at the unincorporated Camp Sherman site, its name tends to confuse Oregonians. The CCC, however, found this position on the Metolius more in keeping with project needs so located it where the (Camp Sherman) Riverside Campground is found today. The CCC men constructed...

Camp Tuna Canyon (P-233) in Tujunga, California was established in 1934.  For most or all of its existence (1934-1941) it was the home of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Company 902. Company 902 installed telephone lines for the Los Angeles County Forest Department, constructed several fire lookout towers, and fought numerous fires, including “the Brown Mountain fire of 1934, the Malibu fires of 1935 and 1936, the Tehachapi fire of 1936, the Bouquet Canyon fire of 1937, the Big Pines fire of 1937, and the Oakmont Country Club fire of 1937” (CCC Annual, L.A. District, 1938). The young men of Company 902 also...

Now the site of the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Camp Upton (near Yaphank, New York), was originally "created in 1917 to house and train soldiers for the United States." Camp Upton and its surroundings was the site of New Deal activity throughout the Great Depression. Four CCC camps based at Camp Upton during the summer of 1934 were involved with, among other things, "the clearing of scrub oak, the planting of trees suited to the type of soil ... the building of fire lines and fire breaks and construction of emergency water holes for fire fighting." (2) The CCC...

Located on private land about 5 miles east of War and on the edge of Cucumber (town, likely a coal camp at one point) in McDowell County along WV Route 16. Occupied on 11 July 1935 with CCC Company 3538-C. The C at the end notes this was a colored CCC camp. McDowell county was a heavily black community noting several entries in the Negro Green Book for decades. This is the only black CCC Company to serve in West Virginia although they worked also at S-77 (Camp Carver/Panther State Forest) and S-76 (Camp Kanawha). This camp worked on fire protection and...

Interest in winter sports, particularly skiing, grew in Oregon during the 1920s. Given the Willamette National Forest (WNF) management's commitment to recreation and the availability of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) labor, US Forest Service Staff worked with local outdoor groups such as Eugene's Obsidian Club to identify locations within the forest for ski areas as early as 1934. The White Branch Recreational Area was  one of the first such projects. A survey crew from CCC Camp Belknap located land for the White Branch project and CCC enrollees began work in the summer of 1934. They built a two-story lodge, ski and...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) made improvements to three of the existing campgrounds in Rocky Mountain National Park: Endovalley, Aspenglen and Glacier Basin.  These three were the most popular campgrounds at the time and their facilities were antiquated, so CCC stepped in to upgrade them (later, they would add  a new campground at Timber Creek on the west side of the park).  (Brock, p 40) The campgrounds were all renovated according to National Park Service standards embodied in the writings of  E.P. Meinecke – Camp Ground Policy (1932) and Camp Planning and Camp Reconstruction (1934).  In 1933-34 CCC enrollees deployed logs and boulders to...

The Union Creek Historic District on the upper Rogue River in Union Creek, Oregon, is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places because it is a fine representative of a type of rustic resort popular in the early 20th century and has been little altered since the 1930s.  There are almost one hundred buildings and other facilities in the Union Creek Historic District, almost all of which conform to the Forest Service plans of the 1920s and 30s.  Roughly a third were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) from 1933 to 1942, working out of the Upper...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was present in Death Valley National Monument  from 1933 to 1942.  Among their many projects in the monument, the CCC 'boys' created five campgrounds and picnic areas. Texas Spring campground was the first and largest, and it remains the best preserved; it includes seven stone picnic tables and stone comfort station (restroom).  Two other campgrounds areas are also located around Furnace Creek, the park headquarters and visitors center.  The Sunset area on the east side of highway 190 serves mostly trailers and Furnace Creek campground and picnic area lies the visitors' center.   Emigrant Junction campground is...

Humboldt Redwoods State Park was established in 1921 with purchases of some of the last remaining Old Growth stands of Coast Redwoods by the Save the Redwoods League. It has since been expanded several times and now includes over 51,000 acres, of which 17,000 are old growth redwood stands.   California did not establish a state parks system until 1928, and little improvement work had been done at Humboldt Redwoods before the New Deal.  When the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) arrived at Dyerville camp in 1933, the young men got to work right away developing the state park.  The CCC was active...

"The Cannon Mountain Ski Area is state-owned and offers nine lifts servicing 165 acres (67 ha) of skiing (158 with snowmaking). In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps cut six ski trails, many of which were later incorporated into the Cannon Mountain Ski Area and, until 1984, the Mittersill Ski Area. The Mittersill Ski Area and Taft CCC Ski Trail were incorporated into the Cannon Mountain Ski Area in 2009."   (wikipedia)

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), working out of the Steamboat CCC Camp under the US Forest Service built four campgrounds nearby, including Canton Creek.  The campgrounds were all built sometime between 1933 and 1941, probably earlier than later in this case. Canton Creek campground has a picnic structure, or gazebo, that looks to be CCC and remains in good condition. Unfortunately, Canton Creek campground was closed when we visited and the entrance sign rather rudely covered with a plastic garbage bag. That appears to be a carryover of the pandemic or it might be winter protection. The settlement of Steamboat has long since...

Canyon de Chelly is "one of a few National Park Service units that lie wholly within Navajo lands." It is jointly managed by the NPS and the Navajo Nation. "The National Park Service was eager to maintain Canyon de Chelly in unaltered condition while also providing safe and attractive accommodations for the visiting public. With $6000 from an erosion control project, Indian CCC laborers began work on the 4,085-foot-long White House Trail, supervised by a park service engineer. Each year Indian CCC enrollees did further work on roads leading to Canyon de Chelly as well as roads and trails within...

"Canyon Lake Park was developed around the 1890s by the Upper Rapid City Company, who planted the Lombardy poplar trees that still line the roads of the park. Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy was a partner in the company that planned to develop Rapid Creek and Canyon Lake as a resort with a hotel and a railroad from the downtown area. The lake flooded out in 1907, and thirty years later the WPA rebuilt the lake and dam, adding the rock landscaping. Working in conjunction with the WPA, enrollees at the Custer State CCC camp spent two years in a side camp located...

Land for Cape Arago State Park was donated to Oregon State Parks in 1932 but lay undeveloped until Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees began improvements in 1934. Over a two-year period, they completed a considerable amount of work.  As noted in a 1965 history of the Oregon State Parks, their tasks included: constructing roads, trails, fire breaks and fire hazard reduction, clearing a picnic area, setting up tables and stoves, constructing a water system and erecting a park foreman's cottage. A CCC camp operated at Cape Arago for the period of time required to provide basic amenities for day use at...

The CCC began working along Cape Hatteras National Seashore in 1934 (this was actually three years before it was officially named "Cape Hatteras National Seashore"). The first CCC boys on this project were based out of Manteo, North Carolina, Camp P 63. The work they performed included the creation of sand dunes and the planting of grasses, shrubs, and trees. The plantings included Bermuda grass, wax myrtle, water bush, loblolly pine, bald cypress, and more (the shrubs and trees were obviously planted a little inland from the beaches and sand dunes). To facilitate the planting, two nurseries were created, one in...

Acquired for state park use in 1935, the State Park plans for this beautiful stretch of coastline in Tillamook County initially focused on its use as an undeveloped, natural preserve. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees built the first major improvement, a 5.2-mile trail to the end of the cape in 1939-1940. They also created a minimal picnic area at Jackson Creek. To provide road access to the park, Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers were employed in the early 1940s. Progress on improvement of the primitive road was halted by lack of funds. Work on road access resumed in the early 1950s.

Located adjacent to Cape Creek at the foot of Cape Perpetua, the Cape Perpetua Campground occupies the former site of the first Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in this part of the Siuslaw National Forest. A small crew of CCC workers lived here in 1933 while constructing the nearby, more permanent Cape Creek CCC Camp. CCC enrollees from Cape Creek went on to develop the site for public camping as part of a plan to increase tourist activity in the area. The CCC improvements made a significant impact on tourist use of the Cape Perpetua area. This success was anticipated in...

After the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp in 1933 at the foot of Cape Perpetua, the young men began to develop the area currently known as the Cape Perpetua Scenic Area for public recreational use.  Their projects included a campground, a network of trails, the West Shelter observation point near the top of the cape, and a roadway to that elevation. Located in the Siuslaw National Forest, Cape Perpetua was among the first areas identified in Oregon for CCC work. In addition to the usual reforestation and conservation assignments associated with US Forest Service land, recreational development became a...

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees began development of the 537-acre Cape Sebastian State Park as early as October 1934. The promontory, covered by spruce forest, offers striking views of the Pacific below. CCC workers developed the roads and trails necessary for the public's access to those views. Parking areas, defined by low rock walls, in the northern and southern parts of the park complete access to the cape's perspective. As summarized by Portland's newspaper, the Oregonian, in 1940: "A lofty promontory, which juts out into the Pacific Ocean; one of the most striking coastal features along the Coast Highway. Good roads here, trails...

The Augusta State Park, or Capital Park, is comprised of the land between the State House and the Kennebec River. It is the earliest known, consciously designed public ground in Maine. The intent of the design was to create a dignified setting for viewing the State Capitol Building along with other public functions. WWI Veteran Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) members from Jefferson camp were involved in clearing a ravine, planting trees, and building trails and benches in 1935.

Preservation of Capital Reef began with the declaration of Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937, via Proclamation 2246 signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.  The original area set aside was only 37,711 acres. Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park and the National Park Service, but Capitol Reef National Monument did not officially open to the public until 1950.  It became a National Park in 1971, under President Richard Nixon, with a much expanded area of 241,000 acres.  The park is 100 miles long but narrow, running north to south, in south-central Utah. It...

Located in the Payette National Forest, this lookout tower were built by the CCC in 1934. A sign near the site (pictured at www.advrider.com) reads: "In 1934 and 1935, Aeromotor Company of Chicago manufactured the 85-foot tall galvanized steel lookout tower. The USDA Forest Service in cooperation with the Civilian Conservation Corps assembled the prefabricated framework on the granitic ridgetop toll, known as Carey Dome."

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) operated a camp at Rattlesnake Springs from 1938 to 1942 and conducted substantial construction and development work at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, including at what's now known as the Carlsbad Caverns National Park Historic District. Among untold other projects and improvements the CCC undertook trail development and landscaping work and constructed residences and maintenance facilities that are still in use today. Treasures on New Mexico Trails: The Historic District at Carlsbad Caverns National Park comprises a number of Pueblo Revival buildings constructed by Park personnel in the 1920s and 1930s and several stuccoed adobe buildings in the...

The Carmel Mission chapel roof was rebuilt in 1936 by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) craftsmen to enable the roof to be covered in clay tile. This was a correction to a restoration performed in 1882. The full name of Carmel Mission is Mission San Carlos Borromeo del rio Carmelo.  It was established by Father Junipero Serra and his Franciscans monks leading the Spanish settlement of Alta California.  He is buried here.  At the time of the beatification of Father Serra in 2015, there were many protests at the mission.

The CCC "did work at Carpenter Park north of the city."

The Civilian Conservation Corps, in conjunction with the Soil Erosion Service (SES) / Soil Conservation Service (SCS) worked to conduct erosion control work on the east fork of the Carson River. The work involved straightening sharp bends and stabilizing the riverbanks.

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Coolidge, Arizona, preserves an ancient Sonoran Desert people's farming community and "Great House."  One of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America, the purpose of the Casa Grande remains a mystery. Between 1937 and 1940 the CCC did extensive work in the area, including constructing a number of adobe park facilities. All of these structures remain in use today and are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "y 1937 the park still did not have a maintenance and storage facility. For this large building project of the 1930s, Park Superintendent Frank...

In 1934 the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) implemented a camp at the Spruce Creek State Park for drought relief by Robert E. Fechner (p.4, The Minneapolis Star), who was selected by President Roosevelt to direct the CCC (Roosevelts tree army). The Spruce Creek Camp established its camp ground at the Cascade River on the North shore. From there they started to build the Cascade River Overlook, which is the largest structure built by the Spruce Creek CCC camp. The CCC camp worked on the overlook for one year between 1934-1935, The Cascade River Overlook is Minnesota’s first example of a...

The Civil Works Administration (CWA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) each helped to construct Casper Mountain Road. "In addition the constructed new and improved existing roads, including not just the conspicuous road snaking up the north slope of the mountain (that was started as a CWA project, although that too may have been an improvement of an existing pathway) but also roads on the top of the mountain."

From 1933 to 1937, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers developed Castle Crags State Park for public use.  CCC enrollees from a camp at Castella built "the park’s roads, trails, infrastructure and buildings in the 'park rustic' style of native wood and stone." (State Parks brochure).  Evidently, some of the CCC workers at Castle Crags were African American (see photo below). The state purchased the land in 1933 from a bankrupt private resort with a mineral springs, "Castle Rock Spring", which had fallen into disrepair.  The CCC workers built a trail down to the river, a new suspension bridge to replace an old, unsafe bridge for...