US Forest Service (USFS) Sites

The New Deal gave a huge boost to the development of Alta Ski Resort in the 1930s and early 1940s.  The work involved the US Forest Service, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Alta is the second or third oldest downhill ski resort in the United States. It began when the last silver mine closed in the Great Depression and the bankrupt owner deeded land to the U.S. Forest Service in lieu of back taxes. It is not clear who thought of creating a ski resort there, since miners had been skiing the canyon for years. In 1935, the Forest Service hired...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) had a camp at Steamboat Creek from 1933 to 1941. It was a US Forest Service camp serving Umpqua National Forest.  The enrollees made many improvements along the North Umpqua River, including campgrounds, trails and bridges. One of the campgrounds developed by the CCC was Apple Creek along the North Umpqua River and Highway 138.  It is a small, plain campground without special features. Apple Creek Campground was closed when we visited in 2022, probably a carryover from the pandemic. The entrance sign is covered in black plastic, which may be protection against winter deterioration, but the...

The New Deal helped construct the 9-mile road from Fort Valley Road (Highway 180) to the Arizona Snow Bowl ski area on Mt. Agassiz in the San Francisco Peaks, northwest of Flagstaff AZ. In the winter of 1938, the 20-30 Club, a Flagstaff service group, held a "snow carnival" on the southwest slope of Mt. Agassiz. It was so successful that the group ran a contest to choose a name for the area, and "Arizona Snow Bowl" was selected. The Coconino National Forest managers saw the opportunity to help advance the ski resort and offered to build a better access road up...

The U.S. Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps built the Briceburg Bridge in Midpines CA. "FOREST SERVICE PLANS BRIDGE AT BULL CREEK Work is being rushed on the new bridge across the Merced River at Briceburg which is being built by the U.S. Forest Service. J. W. Nute, forest service engineer, is here from San Francisco and is in charge of the construction. The bridge is a 160-foot span supported by four one and a fourth inch cables and hangers of iron. Two 25-foot towers support the cables. An interesting feature of this new bridge is the use of steel beams instead of trusses...

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 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), 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...

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...

North Higgins Lake State Park near Roscommon MI is built on what was once the world's largest seedling nursery, established by the Michigan State Forester in 1903.   December 5, 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp at Higgins Lake, briefly on the Hanson Military Reservation and then on US-27 midway between Roscommon and Grayling. The camp operated from 1933-42, and a big part of the CCC activities was forest-related, planting trees and fighting forest fires across the northern part of the state.  The Higgins Lake tree nursery and CCC camp were central to this effort. By 1942, when the CCC ended,...

Contributing improvements in forest management and recreation development, CCC Camp Belknap operated in the Willamette National Forest for five years. From spring 1933 to summer 1938, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees strung phone lines through the forest, and constructed roads and trails. They built lookouts and guard stations with water systems, and fought several major fires. They opened new parts of the forest to camping and other recreation opportunities, building campgrounds, picnic areas, and ski lodges and ski runs. Perhaps the most distinctive of the projects completed by Camp Belknap's "CCC boys" is the Dee Wright Observatory near McKenzie Pass. Although...

One of three Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps located in the Columbia River Gorge, CCC Camp Benson occupied what was then the City of Portland's Benson Park between 1933 and 1935. Enrollees at this early CCC camp made significant contributions to the development of recreational amenities in the Columbia River Gorge. Camp Benson provided workers for much of Eagle Creek Campground's construction in the Cascade Locks area, as well as improvements at the picnic areas at Wahkeena Falls and Benson Park itself.  Commenting on the progress of Camp Benson enrollees at Benson Park, The Oregonian reported: "Crews of CCC workers assigned to...

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Boyington served a company of CCC enrollees within the first year of the New Deal. Construction began on the camp outside of Astoria, near the unincorporated town of Olney, in October 1933. The company of 200 "tree troopers" arrived within months of the historic Tillamook Burn that occurred in the summer of 1933. The CCC enrollees provided management and firefighting services on private forest land in the northern Oregon Coast Range. The 1937 report of the Vancouver Barracks CCC District noted that the Company was identified as "a peak camp" by 1935 when its Company number changed from...

The Brice Creek Civilian Conservation (CCC) Camp was established north of Layng Creek in the Umpqua National Forest in the spring of 1933. Company #731, the first company to occupy the camp comprised of enrollees from Kansas. Later CCC workers came from Illinois and Oregon to provide support primarily to the lumber industry. As noted on the commemorative plaque located at the nearby Rujada Forest Camp: "The CCC enrollees of Camp Brice Creek planted trees and maintained roads, trails, telephone lines and buildings. They fought forest fires and built fire lookouts - Fairview Peak, Holland Point, and the still-standing, Musick Guard Station,...

In October 1937, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Company 1231 arrived in Grant County, Oregon to assume responsibility for work in the Malheur National Forest. The camp was located sixteen miles south of John Day on Canyon Creek, immediately adjacent to Highway 395. By the conclusion of their work at the beginning of World War II, the CCC workers had built fences, lookout towers, cattle guards, corrals, two new campgrounds (Idlewild and Wickiup) and maintained fourteen other Forest Service camps as well as improved forest stands. The one-hundred-and-fifty CCC workers built their camp, which consisted of educational and supply buildings, barracks, a...

On April 5th, 1933, the day that the executive order forming the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was signed, officials of the U.S. Forest Service announced that they would select land near Cape Perpetua for one of the largest of the CCC camps in the Siuslaw National Forest. The site selected was approximately two miles south of Yachats just east of US Highway 101 on the banks of Cape Creek. Construction of the camp began in June 1933 with a crew of twenty-five local CCC recruits. With its completion, the number of CCC workers residing at Cape Creek Camp grew to...

In 1933, Company 832 of the Civilian Conservation Corps built CCC Camp F-17-W at Chimney Park in Wyoming’s Medicine Bow National Forest. CCC enrollees at the Chimney Park camp worked on ranger stations, trails, and roads in addition to establishing and measuring timber research plots. Some of the CCC enrollees went on to study forestry in college following their service. One sent a letter to the U.S. Senate that was cited in government discussions of deforestation in 1971 (“Statement of Hon. Teno Roncalio”).   Camp F-17-W operated continuously until July 20, 1942 and was one of the last CCC camps to close...

Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) Company 3340 worked out of camp F-38 at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, Salt Lake County Utah, from the summer of 1935 through 1942.  Camp F-38 was under the direction of the US Forest Service. The hundreds of CCC enrollees assigned to camp F-38 made many improvements to recreational facilities along the Wasatch Front east of Salt Lake City, including work in Big Cottonwood Canyon, Little Cottonwood Canyon and Mill Creek Canyon. They built trails, roads, bridges, campgrounds, shelters, ski facilities, amphitheaters and more, and even carried out a couple rescue operations, as well. A panel near...

Organized in 1933 and operating through at least 1937, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Fall Creek Camp was the home to Company #965, accommodating approximately 200 enrollees. The site of the camp was covered by a reservoir in 1964-1966. The nearby Clark Creek Organization Camp, ten miles to the east on Fall Creek, is one of the largest projects completed by workers from Fall Creek Camp. A plaque at Clark Creek Organization Camp honors the work of the Fall Creek Camp CCC enrollees, saying: "While on the Willamette National Forest, (they) built the Fall Creek Road and bridges, the Fall Creek trail,...

Members of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) #1258 arrived at CCC Camp Saddle Mountain near Seaside and Cannon Beach OR in the summer of 1935. The majority of the Company's enrollees were from New York. Although the CCC workers occupied tents upon their arrival, they began construction of bunkhouses, recreational halls, officers' quarters and other camp buildings. With the camp's completion, the encampment grew to its full strength of 200 men. Located near what was then the Nehalem Highway (now US Hwy 26), the camp's site was rented by the state to the federal government. Improvement of that land for Oregon State Park...

From 1935 through May 1941, the area now occupied by the Trask River County Campground served as the site of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Trask. The enrollees stationed at the camp worked primarily on truck trail construction and other activities related to "fire hazard reduction" on private forest land. As described in the Vancouver Barracks report (1937): "Camp Trask is built in a grove of fir and spruce trees on the bank of the river and affords a very attractive site. The buildings are arranged into a square, with parade grounds and flagpole in the center. Electric lights are provided...

Located approximately five to seven miles east of Cascade Locks, CCC Camp Wyeth/Cascade Locks (Camp F-7) was one of the longest operating Civilian Conservation Corps camps in the Columbia River Gorge. The US Forest Service's Wyeth Campground currently operates on the site of the former CCC facility. In the summers of 1933 and 1934, tents provided shelter for 200 enrollees put to work on road, trail and campground construction projects. In the summer of 1935, a more permanent commitment to the camp was made when construction of CCC Camp Cascade Locks began on the site located south of Wyeth Road and...

In 1939, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees constructed the Centennial Work Center in Medicine Bow National Forest near the small town of Centennial, Wyoming. CCC workers completed three buildings for use by the U.S. Forest Service, including an office, a dwelling, and a garage. Each building is a one-story log structure with a rubble base foundation. Work began in 1938, with crew members from the Mullen Creek CCC Camp (F-36-W) and Ryan Park Side Camp (F-22-W) cutting logs and laying the foundation for the site. Buildings were constructed by 1939,= and the landscaping was completed by CCC workers in 1940. Originally built to...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the fire lookout tower on Cinnamon Butte in 1934.   Cinnamon Butte lies 5 miles north of Diamond Lake, east of highway 138, and west of the Mt Theilsen Wilderness Area. The lookout tower is 35 feet high with a 14x14 foot observation cabin, all built entirely of wood. This was a standard form and size of lookout tower.  It still stands. The CCC built several fire lookouts for the US Forest Service in Umpqua National Forest, dozens around Oregon and hundreds across the country.    

The Clark Creek Organization Camp is a group campground constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps with the US Forest Service in the late 1930s. As noted on the onsite commemorative plaque: "Clark Creek Organization Camp was built by Company 965 of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936 and 1937. Company 965 was organized in 1933 and located about ten miles west on Fall Creek. One of only four organizaiton camps in the Pacific Northwest, Clark Creek was designed by William Parke, Forest Service Recreation planner, in the "Rustic Design" them of CCC era architecture." The National Association of CCC Alumni, Chapter...

Vehicle access within the Willamette National Forest (WNF) was quite limited in 1933. Consequently, developing truck trails or access roads was a high priority for the US Forest Service for fire management. When Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees arrived in the summer of 1933, they were immediately put to work developing a truck trail from Belknap Springs on the McKenzie Highway north to Clear Lake, and ultimately connecting to US Hwy 20 and the Santiam Highway.  Portions of those road improvements are currently maintained as forest service roads while the remainder has been improved as State Highway 126, known at the...

During the summer and fall of 1937, Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from CCC camps Belknap and Cascadia/Marys Creek developed recreational facilities at Clear Lake. Improvements at the time provided opportunities for camping, picnicking and hiking. Today, the site operates as a day use area only with trails and picnic sites available for use. The CCC laid out campsites with attached picnic facilities above the Clear Lake/Belknap Springs road that are still visible but camping is no longer permitted there. Significant CCC constructed structures that do remain in the Day Use Area include the Clear Lake Picnic shelter and Information Booth. Both...

Colonial Parkway is part of the National Park Service's Colonial National Historical Park. It is a scenic 23-mile parkway that links together Virginia's Historic Triangle of colonial-era communities: Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. Different portions of the parkway were built between 1930 and 1957. In the 1930s, the US Forest Service and the National Park Service used Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers to built the parkway.

As recorded in a discussion of the Mount Hood National Forest in the US Forest Service publication  The Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps: 1933-1942: "The Cooper Spur Trail Shelter was one of several shelters built by the CCC along the Timberline Trail. It was probably built by the Cooper Spur Camp, a side camp of Camp Wyeth at Cascade Locks. The native stone shclter is located on the Hood River Ranger District, about 1 mile south of theCloud Cap Inn and 50 yards from the intersection of the Timberline Trail and Trail 600-A. The 12 x 12-foot shelter was built...

In the spring of 1940, Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from CCC Camp Applegate planted 1200 ponderosa pines in an acre of land south of Ashland's Lithia Park on behalf of a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The DAR's leadership chose participation in the "Penny Pine" program as one of the organization's Golden Jubilee National Projects and encouraged such groves across the country. With the help of the CCC, the National Forest Service had started growing pines in nurseries for replanting as a means of revitalizing the nation's forests. Selling them to organizations for a penny a...

In 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) constructed living quarters, roads, fences and a well at the Desert Experimental Range Station in Pine Valley UT. The station was established in 1933 by President Herbert Hoover, who set aside an 87-square-mile area of high desert in the Great Basin.  The CCC improvements made the range station functional. The Desert Experimental Range focuses on cold desert rangeland research. In 1976, it was designated a world biosphere reserve by UNESCO, the only cold desert reserve in the Western Hemisphere.  It is administered by the US Forest Service. 

Although the Eagle Creek Campground opened as the first "auto camp" in the northwest region in 1915, Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) workers made significant improvements to the campground from 1934 to 1937. As early as August 1934, the Oregonian reported that "Eagle Creek Campground is being improved so it will accommodate more picnic parties, through labors of boys from the Benson CCC camp . . . ". Their work included clearing additional campground space, building fireplaces and cutting up fallen snags to create wood for campfires. Headlines from the same Portland newspaper announced later in the fall that a record number of visitors...

In 1937, CCC workers from Camp Cascade Locks began improvements on recently acquired park land to extend the Eagle Creek campground and picnic area to the shores of the Columbia. These twenty-one acres were acquired to provide access to land overlooking Bonneville Dam. This new campground and picnic area is referred to as the Eagle Creek Overlook Group Site. In addition to landscaped trails and new picnic facilities and campsites, the CCC workers built the Eagle Creek Overlook Shelter to serve as a community kitchen, picnic shelter and restroom facility. As a 1984 US Forest Service report states: "The overlook building...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) had a camp at Steamboat Creek from 1933 to 1941. It was a US Forest Service camp serving Umpqua National Forest.  The enrollees made many improvements along the North Umpqua River, including campgrounds, trails and bridges. One of the campgrounds developed by the CCC was at Eagle Rock along Highway 138.

Ecola State Park offers one of the most widely recognized views of the Pacific on the Oregon Coast. Development of the four miles of coastline for park began in 1934 with the work of CCC enrollees from CCC Camp Saddle Mountain (#1258). A number of CCC workers from Company #1258 were located in the 450-acre park from fall 1934 through the spring of 1936. During that time, under the direction of the National Park Service, they completed improvements including an access road, a water system, and a picnic area. They also constructed new trails through rugged terrain and engaged in forest...

This fire lookout tower outside Briar was a New Deal project completed in 1936. It was almost surely built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) under the direction of the US Forest Service, but that needs to be confirmed. The tower design is typical of the era. The Briar Lookout is intact, including a stairway extending to the ground. Access is restricted by a surrounding high chain link fence topped with barbed wire for safety reasons. It is one of the southernmost lookout towers in Missouri.  

A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) side camp, also known as spike camp, operated at Fish Lake in the Willamette National Forest during the from 1934 to 1939. Side or spike camps allowed the CCC to locate its workers closer to their job sites on special projects and forest fighting. In the case of the Fish Lake CCC camp, workers from CCC Camp Mary Creek (Company 2907) and CCC Camp Belknap (Company 927) were moved to the area during the construction season to improve the operation of the Fish Lake Guard Station for its packing operation. This involved building additional corral space...

By constructing several buildings and the necessary facilities for management of mules and horses, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers played an integral role in  transforming the Fish Lake Guard Station into the Fish Lake Remount Depot. To operate in the rough terrain of the surrounding national forest and nearby wilderness areas, the Forest Service depended on pack animals. The CCC located a side camp at Fish Lake from 1934 - 1939 to improve the Depot for this purpose while assisting in fire fighting and development of recreation opportunities in the Willamette National Forest as well. In 2016, the Fish Lake Remount...

Development of a "truck trail," as fire roads were called, was the first priority of the members of #2908 at Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Nehalem when the camp opened in 1935. The camp was located on the edge of the Tillamook Burn. The Tillamook Burn of 1933 was the first of four successive, large forest fires in the northern Oregon Coast Range (1933; 1939; 1945; 1951) that destroyed thousands of acres of what was then private forest land. The 1933 fire burned through 240,000 acres, creating conditions that fueled future fires. At the time of the first fire, vehicle access...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the ranger station in Glide OR at the confluence of the North Umpqua River and Little River, in 1938. The building style is wood and stone, with plank siding, a typical Forest Service rustic look. The little trees cut in the shutters are charming, and they seem to be a common feature around the National Forests and parks of the northwest. The building was refurbished and reopened as an information station in 1992. The modern North Umpqua National Forest ranger station lies just behind the CCC building.