Water Supply Sites

The Cape Cod Canal is an artificial waterway traversing the narrow neck of land that joins Cape Cod to mainland Massachusetts. First constructed in the early 20th century, the canal was widened during the New Deal.  That work was part of a much larger project that included three new bridges across the canal (Short & Stanley-Brown 1939) The project was overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers and funded by the Public Works Administration (PWA), circa 1933-35.  The Works Progress Administration (WPA) came in later to do work on the banks, the nature of which is not specified in the...

"One of the biggest undertakings took on was the building of Cat Creek Dam. Knowing water is a viable commodity in the desert, these men saw the uncontrolled use and abuse from being overgrazed and where deep-rooted sage was replaced with shallow rooted grasses and willows. The CCC men laid approximately 40,000 feet of pipe to carry the water from the back areas. They also built a dam to contain the water."

Cathedral Gorge State Park, outside Pioche, Nevada, was first constructed during the 1930s by the federal Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). "Cathedral Gorge is also the site of a water tower that the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built and used when constructing the park in the 1930’s." (lccentral.com)

CCC crews (Camp G-31) conducted work in the vicinity of Vernal, including building this small reservoir, or "CCC Tank."

The Civil Works Administration (CWA) conducted work at what Living New Deal believes is Riverside Cemetery (a.k.a. Cody Cemetery) in Cody, Wyoming. Cassity: "At Pine Bluffs, the water main was extended about a half mile so that it would reach the cemetery; to do so, the CWA workers dug a five-foot trench and laid three inch cast iron pipe, refilled the trench, and then placed four hydrants in the cemetery"

The following article was found in the January 13, 1938 issue of The Enderlin Independent. ************ WPA PROJECT TO LAY WATER MAIN TO CEMETERY ------------ Project Calls For 1856 Feet of Pipe; Work To Start Soon ------------- The city council has received notice that their request for a citywide WPA project which includes laying water main to the cemetery has been accepted and this week is advertising for bids on the necessary material. The project calls for the laying of 1856 feet of pipe. Of this material, the government will pay for 900 feet of the two inch cast iron pipe. The main will be connected at the...

The Central Valley Project (CVP) was originally conceived of in the 19th century, but took shape as the "State Water Project" in 1919.  The federal government turned it down in the 1920s, after which it gained approval from the state legislature in 1933.  The Great Depression made it impossible for the state to sell the bonds to finance the system, however, so the federal government stepped back in. Initial financing was provided under the Emergency Appropriations Act of 1935 with the Army Corps of Engineers in charge, but control and construction passed to the US Bureau of Reclamation in water project legislation by Congress in 1937. The...

This New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps camp was built to house CCC laborers as they assisted with infrastructure development and upkeep for the East San Francisco Bay Area water system. In addition to work on water infrastructure, CCC workers at Chabot built fences and managed second growth stumps in the nearby eucalyptus grove.

Built of native granite in 1939, it once held 5,000 gallons of water. The WPA also put in two miles of footpaths, planted 4,000 trees and bushes, and built parking lots and other amenities on the Lindbergh property, creating what is now a state park.

"The park’s history is tied to Camp Morehouse, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp that was located nearby, and a company of young men who began construction of the park in the 1930s. The Morehouse Enterprise reports June 8, 1933 that CCC Company 1491 under the command of U.S. Army Capt. Ralph L. Ware had arrived in Bastrop via train from Camp Beauregard. The company included 188 enrollees from Morehouse and surrounding parishes. The men would be stationed at Camp Morehouse about 12 miles north of Bastrop  on land owned by the Crossett Lumber Co., where they planned to build a lighting plant,...

Works Project Administration (WPA) project No. 7214, sponsored by the city of Glendale. "This project provides for the construction of a reinforced concrete distributing reservoir of 5,000,000 gallon capacity with connecting pipe lines, and a roadway for maintenance and service. It will replace a series of wooden tanks, now serving this isolated district, which are not at the proper elevation to tie in with the rest of the reservoir system. This project also provides for the connecting of the new unit with the Park Manor reservoir, which will bring another isolated territory into the system. The availability of interconnected reservoirs will...

In the 1890s, the city of Chicopee purchased a tract of land along Cooley Brook for the creation of a reservoir, which later took place in 1926. Nearly a decade later during the Great Depression the area was selected for expansion and the creation of a state park by the Civilian Conservation Corps The CCC operated Camp 1156 in Chicopee, Massachusetts from 1935 to 1937. The camp that resided in Chicopee was near Cooley Brook Reservoir where Chicopee Memorial State Park is located today and housed about two hundred young men. CCC workers conducted efforts throughout the Chicopee Memorial State Park...

A Works Progress Administration (WPA) dam enlargement project was undertaken to increase the municipal water reserves of Crowell, Texas in an effort completed in 1936. "The capacity of city lake was more than doubled by a WPA project completed last spring. The dam of the lake was raised three and one-half feet and the spillway three feet."

"This Art Deco-style building smack-dab in the middle of the state was originally a Water Treatment Facility built in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration. When a new water treatment facility was built across the street in the 1970’s, the structure was converted to the City Hall building."

Works Progress Administration (WPA) project cards in the National Archives indicate that WPA crews did extensive work on the city water supply system in Fortuna in 1937 and 1940.  A new reservoir was proposed in 1935 and approved in 1936.  The next round, in 1939-40, included laying of new and reclaimed water mains, installing hydrants and improving water treatment. This work cannot be definitively confirmed, since water mains are undergr0und and hydrants have been replaced by modern fixtures.  The reservoir on a hill north of downtown Fortuna does appear to be of the right age to be the one built by...

The Works Progress Administration built a water intake for the city of Gadsden, circa 1937. The exact location and condition of this facility is unknown to the Living New Deal.

A waterworks project in Lovelock NV was undertaken during the Great Depression with the aid of federal Public Works Administration (PWA) funds. The PWA supplied a $73,500 loan and $26,892 grant for the project, whose total cost was $100,517. Work took place between September 1934 and February 1935. The exact nature of the project needs to be determined.  It was presumably an upgrade of the domestic and firefighting water system, which was common during the New Deal (see e.g., Carlin NV project page).  

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) did improvements to the San Luis Obispo water supply in the 1930s.  WPA photographs from the National Archives show workers laying water pipes in city streets. Exactly when and where is not known to us.

In 1933-34, a large number of civil improvements were made to Twin Falls, Idaho by the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and Idaho Emergency Relief Administration (IERA). The works were done by relief workers hired from local jobless rolls in the depths of the Great Depression. Both CWA and IERA were funded by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), to the tune of around $250,000. The civic improvements included the City Park band shell, work at the water treatment plant, tennis court at Harmon Park, painting Shoshone Street bridge, grading over 200 blocks of city streets, and graveling 95 blocks of streets.

"Clarkco is one of Mississippi's eight original state parks. It was constructed in 1938 by Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1437, which, with other CCC companies, stayed in barracks in a camp along U.S. Hwy 45 within the park. Four of the original cabins and two large picnic shelters built by the CCC men are still in use. Unfortunately the original water tower and lookout tower fell into ruins and were removed... A side trail branches off from the lake circuit trail at the Island Rest Area, leading in 0.8 mile to the site of the CCC camp, which was used between...

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Abe Boehm, a CCC enrollee (Company 3740) stationed at Camp Clear Lake in northeastern California between February and June of 1937: "I must have worked on the Clear Lake dam for 2 or 3 months. Now you talk about work! Every stone we put in that dam was hand placed. There were about 60 to 80 men working on the dam. We had five or six 1932/1933 Chevrolet dump trucks; the truck driver and two guys would go out and drive through the sagebrush south of the dam, where those rocks were...

Clearwater Reservoir, located under what is now La Salle Park (formerly Centennial Park) along the shores of Lake Erie in Buffalo, New York, was a massive federal Work Progress Administration project completed in 1936. The project put thousands of local laborers to work. The water supply reservoir was "roofed over with a concrete platform to provide a much needed auto parking space." Buffalo's Courier Express discussed the dedication of the project on December 30, 1936, writing of the $1,000,000 project. Buffalo's then-Mayor George J. Zimmermann stated: "With completion of this reservoir Buffalo's water system will be equalled by no other city." He...

The park was built by CCC Co. 3804 who were at the park from the spring of 1935 to Aug 1940. According to "Parks for Texas," CCC work includes the dam and lake, a limestone residence and maintenance area, entrance portals, and fireplace units. Additional work was completed by the WPA in 1941, including a bathhouse and concession building, plus a water and sewer system.

The pumphouse is located near Little Clifty Creek at the north section of the park. The pumphouse was completed in 1936. The style of the pumphouse is classified as Parks Rustic.

The Coachella Canal is a 122-mile (196 km) aqueduct that conveys Colorado River water for irrigation to the Coachella Valley in Riverside County, California.  It is effectively a branch of the All-American Canal, which was completed in the 1930s.   Both are arms of the gigantic Colorado River Storage Project, anchored by Boulder Dam, built under the Bureau of Reclamation.  The contract for both canals went to the so-called Six Companies – an alliance of big western construction firms including Kaiser, Bechtel, Utah Construction and Parsons. Contracts were signed in 1936-37 and work began in 1940 but was interrupted by the...

Multiple New Deal agencies contributed to the construction of water mains and development of the water system for Wayland, Mass. Examples of water mains installed or replaced: Stanton St., Harrison St., and Dunster Ave. in 1933; Old Connecticut Path and Sycamore Rd. in 1934.

The Colorado-Big Thompson Project (C-BTP) is a massive water storage and transfer project for agriculture, cities and power generation. It involves dams and reservoirs on the west side of the Rocky Mountains' Front Range to collect water from the upper Colorado River system; a tunnel through the mountains under Rocky Mountain National Park; and a series of storage reservoirs, power plants and distribution aqueducts on the eastern side of the Rockies. The project extends over a large area of Grand, Larimer, and Weld counties, and portions of four others.  The C-BTP was built and is still managed by the US Bureau of...

The Works Progress Administration installed new sewer lines on Commandant Gade in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas.

This PWA pumping station is still standing. A 1939 PWA publication described it as follows: "This interesting structure is approached by a wide walk between lawns which leads to the main entrance flanked by sculptured twin representations of Pegasus. The main floor is 12 feet below grade to permit the pumps to be placed below the intake water level, and at the grade level is a gallery extending around the entire building. An overhead traveling crane serves the five electrical pumps which are capable of discharging 13,500 gallons of water per minute at a pressure of 200 pounds per square inch. The...

In 1942, the Washington Post reported the approval of funds for the Federal Works Administration (FWA) to construct more than two miles of water mains in the Congress Heights neighborhood in SE Washington DC.  While there is currently no evidence that funds were cancelled, we have not been able to verify the completion of the work.

The historic water tower in Monette, Arkansas was constructed as a New Deal-assisted project during the Great Depression. "The Cotter Water Tower is being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places with local significance under Criterion A for its associations with the activities of the Public Works Administration (PWA) in Cotter, Arkansas, in the 1930s. The Cotter Water Tower is also being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C as it is the only example of a 1930s-era PWA water tower in Cotter. The Cotter Water Tower is being submitted to the National Register of Historic...

"The Cotton Plant water tower is a historic elevated steel water tower located in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. It was built in 1935 by the Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel Company in conjunction with the Public Works Administration as part of a project to improve the area's water supply. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, as part of a multiple-property listing that included numerous other New Deal-era projects throughout Arkansas."

Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) workers constructed a covered reservoir in Beverly, Massachusetts. The status and exact location of the project is unknown to Living New Deal. From a W.P.A. Bulletin: Now near completion, the Beverly WPA Concrete-Covered Reservoir Project, connected with the present pipe distribution system, completely surrounded with an earth embankment and featuring a driveway over its top, has a capacity of 2,800,000 gallons.

"Coyote Dam, is a 140-foot (43 m) high, 980-foot (300 m) long, earth and rock dam built in 1936 in Santa Clara County, California...It impounds Coyote Lake (also known as Coyote Reservoir). The Santa Clara Valley Water District owns the dam." -Wikipedia

“Extensive repairs were made to Creque Reservoir in St. Croix where silting and increasing seepage endangered the dam structure which impounds 9,000,000 gallons of potable water. The dam footings have been strengthened and the reservoir area cleaned and put in order for the storage of water when the rains fall.” Built in 1926, the Creque Dam is a 45-foot high arch dam that stores water for Frederiksted. Today, the water in the reservoir sometimes runs low because of a leak.

"The CCC assigned to Custer State Park had the objective of making nature more enjoyable and accessible to the public. Recreational improvements in the state's largest park included the construction of dams at Horsethief Lake, Stockade Lake, Center Lake and Bismarck Lake. Picnic areas an/or campgrounds were developed at each of these lakes, as well as other sites throughout the park. At Sylvan Lake, the CCC collected the stone for the PWA-financed and WPA-constructed lodge, built seventeen rustic log and stone cabins, a store and a filling station fro use in conjunction with the lodge, installed water and sewer systems,...

" grew rapidly in the 1920s, acquired additional lands; during the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps made many park improvements. CCC men laid out campgrounds and picnic areas, built a massive park museum, miles of roads, sturdy bridges and a stone fire tower, but, most importantly, constructed three dams creating Stockade, Center and Legion Lakes, all of which provide for water-based recreation." --John R. Thune, "Custer State Park"

"The CCC assigned to Custer State Park had the objective of making nature more enjoyable and accessible to the public. Recreational improvements in the state's largest park included the construction of dams at Horsethief Lake, Stockade Lake, Center Lake and Bismarck Lake. Picnic areas an/or campgrounds were developed at each of these lakes, as well as other sites throughout the park. At Sylvan Lake, the CCC collected the stone for the PWA-financed and WPA-constructed lodge, built seventeen rustic log and stone cabins, a store and a filling station fro use in conjunction with the lodge, installed water and sewer systems,...

"The grew rapidly in the 1920s, acquired additional lands; during the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps made many park improvements. CCC men laid out campgrounds and picnic areas, built a massive park museum, miles of roads, sturdy bridges and a stone fire tower, but, most importantly, constructed three dams creating Stockade, Center and Legion Lakes, all of which provide for water-based recreation." --John R. Thune, "Custer State Park"

"The grew rapidly in the 1920s, acquired additional lands; during the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps made many park improvements. CCC men laid out campgrounds and picnic areas, built a massive park museum, miles of roads, sturdy bridges and a stone fire tower, but, most importantly, constructed three dams creating Stockade, Center and Legion Lakes, all of which provide for water-based recreation." --John R. Thune, "Custer State Park"