Street Trees Sites

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was extremely active in Grand Canyon National Park throughout the New Deal. The CCC enrollees worked under the direction of the National Park Service (NPS) and some of the projects were funded by the Public Works Administration (PWA).  The first CCC camp was established on the South Rim, where Company 819 started working on improvements to the facilities around Grand Canyon Village, the main visitor center for the park, c. 1933-1937. The CCC enrollees built a stone wall along the Rim Trail, the Kolb Studio stairs, the Community Building, rock pillars on Navajo Street, and various paths, culverts,...

The heart of today's Greenbelt, Maryland – popularly known as "Old Greenbelt" – is a large, planned community laid out and constructed during the New Deal. It features community facilities such as a school, theater and community center, a large number and variety of housing, basic infrastructure of roads, water and sewers, and extensive landscaping and an attached forest.  Almost all of the original facilities are still intact. Greenbelt was one of four greenbelt towns initiated by Rex Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration (RA). Greendale, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, and Greenhills, Ohio, near Cincinnati, are other surviving greenbelt towns; a fourth,...

The Civil Works Administration (CWA) planted around 400 street trees in the city of Martinez in the winter of 1933-34. The plantings consisted of walnuts and sycamores.  (Henderson 2014) Susana Park had just been deeded to the city by the Masonic Lodge, which stands nearby.  Many of the trees in the park are probably planted by the CWA.  Rock work at the entrances to the park may well be CWA, but that cannot be confirmed (benches connected to the low rock walls were removed in a recent renovation of the park). A special ceremony was held at Susana Park to plant trees...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertook a program of planting 10,000 street trees around the City of Oakland in 1938 to 1940.  Some $113,000 was earmarked out of a large grant of over $1.5 million for parks improvements in the city made by the WPA in 1938.  The work was supervised by Edgar Sanborn, City Forester. We do not have detailed information on which streets enjoyed the benefits of this program. 

The Civil Works Administration (CWA) planted 10,000 street trees around Berkeley CA in 1933-34 and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) followed with 5,000 more, c. 1938-39.  (Gazette, 3/11/39) According to the city manager of Berkeley, 15,000 flowering fruit trees had been planted by April 1939 (Gazette, 4/4/1939) Street tree planting was a major, if unappreciated, aspect of the New Deal. Determining which trees were planted on which streets is impossible at this point, and most of the trees (particularly short-lived fruit trees) have passed on by this time.  Nevertheless, there are several streets, such as Hopkins Street, where elm, camphor and ash trees of...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was active in Jerome, a copper mining town hit hard by the Great Depression.  The WPA hired out-of-work miners for several projects in Jerome and nearby towns. One of those projects was planting trees to stabilize the steep hillside on which the town is built (like so many western mining towns).  The favorite tree for the job was the tough, fast-growing Ailanthus, or Chinese Tree of Heaven. Since the species readily spreads by root suckers, they are all over the town to this day.  But the harsh climate of Jerome, varying from winter snow to desert heat,...