Research Facilities Sites

The Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, or BARC, is a unit of the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. BARC is the largest agricultural research complex in the world. It was founded in 1910 and greatly expanded under the New Deal.  Several New Deal agencies were involved in this massive  project, presumably working under the direction of the USDA's Bureau of Plant Industry (which later became part of the Agricultural Research Service). To begin with, the Public Works Administration (PWA) purchased the land and paid for clearing, drainage, water lines, roads, walkways and an irrigation system.  The...

The United States National Arboretum was established as a public center for scientific research, education, and gardens to conserve and showcase the floral bounty of America and the world.  It was authorized in 1927, but the actual development of the arboretum was accomplished during the 1930s by the New Deal. The Public Works Administration (PWA) funded land acquisition, as well as extensive planning and mapmaking, for the Arboretum. Young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) performed the work under the supervision of the Bureau of Plant Industry (today's Agricultural Research Service) of the Department of Agriculture (USDA)  The Arboretum was established by an...

President Franklin Roosevelt created Patuxent Research Refuge (PRR) with Executive Order 7514, December 16, 1936, and Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace dedicated it on June 3, 1939.  The refuge began with 2,670 acres and has since grown to 12,841 acres. It is “the nation's only national wildlife refuge established to support wildlife research” (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service). Several New Deal agencies helped to build the extensive facilities at the Patuxent Research Refuge. At the time, wildlife refuges came under the direction of the Bureau of Biological Survey (later merged into the Fish & Wildlife Service).  The Works Progress Administration (WPA)...

The federal government built a large new health research complex in Hamilton, Montana, during the New Deal, with construction completed in 1940.  It would have been done by the Public Buildings Division of the Federal Works Administration for the use of the Public Health Service (now the National Institutes of Health, NIH).  The laboratory had previously been housed in an empty school building. The laboratory works on insect-borne diseases.   "After its successful work with spotted fever, the Rocky Mountain Laboratory expanded its facilities and programs ... to work on other insect-borne diseases, such as yellow fever and the spirochetal relapsing...