Tree Planting Sites

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,...

Located nine miles northeast of Wheeler in Tillamook County, Camp Nehalem was the home to Company #2908 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees from 1935 to approximately 1941. Company #2908 was known as the "Oregon Company," being made up entirely of Oregon enrollees. Its project designation, P-221, indicates that the company worked primarily on private forest land. When the company was formed in 1933, CCC Camp Boyington near Astoria housed the 200 enrollees of Company #2908. From 1933 - 1936, severe forest fires plagued the area and many of the CCC companies provided forest fighting services. The company was moved from its...

CCC Camp Warrenton housed companies of Civilian Conservation Company (CCC) enrollees with a special mission. Although called upon occasionally to fight fires, their primary charge was stabilizing beaches along Clatsop County's coastline. As reported by the Daily Astorian, the Columbia River south jetty had "played havoc on the beaches as far south as Gearhart" since its completion in 1913. Planting Holland Dune Grass along with wooden fences was, at the time, an experiment to halt beach erosion. One report suggests the commitment to this soil conservation project began with the beginning of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933. By June 1936,...

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...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park occupies large areas of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. The park’s creation was a decades-long process, including advocacy in the late 19th century; legislation signed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926; and donations and land acquisitions from small donors, the governments of North Carolina and Tennessee, and charitable organizations, such as the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund. Once the park’s existence was firmly established, funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) and labor from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) made it both accessible and accommodating to the public. President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the park on...

“As a result of colonial wood utilization and wildfires, most of the original forest was cleared and burnt over by the mid-1800s. The Massachusetts Game Sanctuary Association initiated reforestation efforts in 1912 by planting 30,000 white pines around Barrett Pond and East Head Reservoir.  In 1916, the State Forest Commission purchased the 5,700-acre Game Sanctuary Association property, creating Myles Standish State Forest (MSSF).  By the end of the 1920s, the state had purchased the majority of the land we now know as MSSF.  Today, MSSF has approximately 12,404 acres and is the largest public recreation area in southeastern Massachusetts. “After acquiring...

In April 1936, C.S. Liller, the janitor at Potomac State College (PSC), and three enrollees of the National Youth Administration (NYA), John Bright, Edward Furlong, and Joe Dickel, began planting larch and evergreen trees on the “Mineral Street slope of the Potomac Campus” (The Pasquino, April 24, 1936).  The president of the college, Joseph W. Stayman, contributed to the project, too, by driving the NYA men to Backbone Mountain to acquire more trees. Later in 1936, NYA students planted 15 sugar maple trees between the men’s and women’s dorms (Reynolds and Davis halls). This time, they were joined by Dr. Robert...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) operated Camp NP-1-N from 1938 to 1942 at Rattlesnake Springs—now the Rattlesnake Springs Historic District—in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The group conducted substantial work at the site. Bob Hoff's Carlsbad Caverns History Blog: At Rattlesnake Springs, the CCC enrollees built a ranger residence still in use today. They also constructed a service road and a water diversion ditch and constructed masonry work to line the Rattlesnake Springs pond. While National Park Service Landscape Architect Harvey Cornell provided the plans for the CCC camp layout in 1938 it is not clear to what extent CCC enrollees constructed the...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) did reforestation and development on the Shimek State Forest, located on abandoned farm land near Farmington, Iowa.

The Tillamook Burn was a series of forest fires occurring at approximately six-year intervals between 1933 and 1951. The fires destroyed 355,000 acres of old growth timber in what is now the Tillamook State Forest. At the time of the fires, the majority of timberland belonged to private timber companies. The CCC was instrumental both in fighting the fires in the early 1930s and in replanting much of the area destroyed by the burn.

In 1935, the Public Works Administration (PWA) conducted tree surgery at the Department of Subsistence Homesteads' "rurban homes" in El Monte, CA. Four photographs depict tree surgeons at work, including with "a rather extreme effort to reclaim a tree by gouging out a large cavity, swabbing out with creosote and refilling with concrete held in with wire mesh."

The Civilian Conservation Corp’s (CCC) work at Yellowstone National Park was extensive and lasted for the entirety of the CCC program, 1933-1942.  Projects included water and sewer line installation, landscaping, tree planting, the construction of fire lookouts and weather stations, firefighting and fire prevention, trail maintenance, museum assistance, snow removal, campground development, building amphitheatres, and the “Construction of buildings ranging from many of those at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch to the residences in Lower Mammoth, sheds and utility buildings throughout the park’s developed areas” (Manns, 1981). There were six main CCC camps in Yellowstone: Mammoth Camp (YNP-1), Canyon Camp (YNP-2), Lake...