Parks and Recreation Sites

The WPA allocated $18,689 for "Dornblaser athletic field improvement" at the University of Montana in Missoula. The stadium housed Montana Grizzlies football home games, and is not to be confused with the newer recreation center that bears the same name. According to Wikipedia, the site of 'old' Dornblaser Field "is now the location of the Mansfield Library."

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) constructed a stone shelter here in 1936. The Double Ditch Indian Village State Historic Site commemorates the Mandan tribe, an agricultural people in the Missouri Valley.

Sam Houston National Forest comprises three counties—Montgomery, San Jacinto, and Walker—that have been occupied for millennia. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) constructed Double Lake Recreation Area, on the east side of the land, and surrounding a 24-acre lake, in 1937. Its facilities include “family camping units, group camping, picnicking units, a picnic shelter, swimming area and beach, and a concession stand with bathhouse. Each family camping unit has a table, fireplace, tent pad, parking spur, and lantern-holder post. There are units with water, sewer, and electrical hook-ups. Picnic units have tables and fireplaces” (fs.usda.gov).

"The grounds have been used for baseball since 1920, on what was Elihu Phinney's farm. A wooden grandstand was built in 1924, later replaced by a steel and concrete grandstand built in 1939 by the Works Project Administration."

The Works Progress Administration built the Municipal Golf Course and club house in Douglas, Converse County, Wyoming. The facility is still in service today and operates under the name Douglas Community Club.

From the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs: "CCC features at Douglas include a picnic pavilion, administration building, stone culverts and well maintained water holes."

(10.48 Acres) 26th and Douglass Streets. Excavated and removed 5,700 cubic yards of loose rock, constructed a rubble masonry wall and faced 12,000 square feet of slope with rubble masonry; installed 3,500 pipe feet of irrigation system and 475 feet of drainage system; erected 1,550 lineal feet of chain link fence, a standard convenience station; spread loam and planted 130,000 ice plants; built ball field and irrigation system. This is an example of what a city can do with worthless, abandoned quarry.--Healy, p. 62.

A 4,545 acre park and one of the first six Virginia State Parks, includes original cabins. "Approximately 600 men from the Civilian Conservation Corps developed and constructed the majority of the modern-day park system."

The WPA constructed this park from a reclaimed landfill c. 1937.

The Downing Street Playground was built circa 1935 with the help of the New Deal. The agency involved in funding or completing the work is unknown to the Living New Deal. During his tenure as Parks Commissioner, Robert Moses used New Deal funding and labor to build public park facilities, yet rarely credited the New Deal agencies that supported the projects. Because he prohibited the placement of New Deal plaques and corner stones, we have few sources that tie public parks in New York to New Deal agencies. However, several of Moses’ statements reveal that during the 1930s most of...

Doyle Field is a football & softball field next to a PWA built auditorium. An article in the Bangor Daily News November 14, 1933 has an article about City Manager F. D. Farnsworth submitting a request for Federal assistance to help improve the Brewer Athletic field which was then called Legion Park. Original design was for the building of a cinder track, an extensive drainage system and the leveling of the football field. The Feb. 22nd issue said that 61 men were employed, however due to cuts, hours were reduced from 24 to 40 and hourly pay cut from 50...

Now a part of the much larger Calvert Vaux Park (also still referred to as Dreier-Offerman Park), this smaller playground at Cropsey Ave. and Bay 46th St. was constructed by the Department of Parks in 1934. Mayor La Guardia attended the opening ceremony in November 1934. The press release announcing the opening described the new playground as having "a wading pool and a two-story brick field house. The sand tables, seesaws, slides and swings for small children are located on the Bay side of the building.  Apparatus for older children is located in the space adjoining Cropsey Avenue." This playground...

J.D. Sutton, a private in the 10th West Virginia Infantry, was a veteran of the Battle of Droop Mountain. As a visionary he began the movement to preserve Droop Mountain. He and other veterans began to worry in the aftermath of World War I that their role will be forgotten. In the 1920s the veterans of the battle began to meet at the battlefield making locations of the engagement. In 1928, Governor Howard M. Gore accepted the first 141 acres for the state from the veterans. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worked to develop West Virginia's Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park. "A...

One of 7 bridges in Yuba County that were widened with a federal grant of $50,000 during the Great Depression was the bridge carrying New York House Road over Dry Creek near Brownsville, California.

A WPA press release from Jan. 1938 reported: "Improvement of Dry Falls State Park, two miles from Coulee City will keep more than 50 men busy for eight months, Abel said, with the aid of $29,601.75 in WPA funds. This allotment continues a project which is already 25 per cent completed, and includes the construction of water systems, roads and other needed improvements. The State Park Committee is sponsoring the work which a project supervisor estimated would benefit more than 100,000 persons."

This playground on the edge of Forest Park in Queens is named after Glendale's original name: Dry Harbor. The NYC Parks site explains that it was "constructed in 1934 with swings, see-saws, a wavy slide, a flagpole, and a schoolyard gymnasium." A June 1936 press release also announced the completion of the reconstruction of an area in this playground to contain "a wading pool, complete equipment for small children and a play area with a soft ball diamond and horseshoe pitching court for boys," and in December 1936 Parks announced the completion of the second half of the remodeled playground...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) prepared Dry Lagoon State Park for public use. The work was carried out between 1933 and 1937 by Company 1903 at Camp Prairie Creek, from where the CCC worked on state parks all along the north coast of California. The CCC enrollees built a park boundary fence and demolished the remains of the derelict Dry Lagoon Farm (Dry Lagoon had become a meadow and marsh after being drained for farming in the 19th century). They returned the area to a more native landscape by planting rhododendrons, ceanothus and other coastal vegetation and clearing the beach of...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp 23 miles north of Monticello  in San Juan County, in the southeast corner of Utah. CCC teams worked around Dry Valley, Indian Creek, Blanding, Monticello and La Sal, building fences and corrals; flood control and erosion works, including reseeding, revegetation and cultivation; telephone lines; and  campgrounds.  The CCC men also built the road through the Abajo Mountains from Monticello to Blanding.  Nothing remains of the camp except ruins of the camp gate, building foundations, the access road and an old Pontiac -- all of which are well documented by Mary Cokenour on her blog site...

The public swimming pool at Rafferty Slough in Dubuque, IA was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1937. Measuring 75 x 225 feet, the Dubuque pool was the largest and most expensive of a number of publicly constructed swimming pools in Iowa during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Over the course of its construction, the pool project secured employment for sixty-one laborers. The dedication of the pool culminated a total expenditure of $17,000 by the city of Dubuque with the rest of the funding coming from the WPA. The opening ceremony included public speeches, diving exhibitions, and swimmers performing...

F.E.R.A. developed a bathing beach at Dudley Pond in Wayland, Mass.

The federal Works Progress Administration undertook a $93,900 project starting in 1935 to modernize and otherwise improve several public (now-former) bath facilities in Brooklyn, NY. The public baths at 42 Duffield Street were constructed in 1905; the building has since been demolished. The facilities identified as part of the WPA project were: 209 Wilson Ave. Municipal Baths, Coney Island Duffield Street Hicks Street Pitkin Ave. Huron St. Montrose Ave.

"In the early 1930s, though, Duke Park became one of several Durham parks that were redeveloped by the Civil Works Administration and Emergency Relief Administration of North Carolina as agents for the Federal Works Progress administration."

Dunbar Playground is named after African American poet Paul Dunbar. It was opened by the New York Department of Parks on September 23, 1935. The department press release stated that the playground would be "equipped with a wading pool, shuffle board court, handball courts, swings, slides, seesaws, etc." (kermitproject.org). Although the release does not specify federal involvement, researcher Frank da Cruz explains here that “it is safe to say that every single project completed by the NYC Park Department during the 1930s was federally funded to some degree.” After April 1935, the WPA was especially involved in the development of...

On 3 September 1935, the city of Spartanburg signed a contract with the Works Project Administration (WPA) to building Duncan Park Lake. The city furnished equipment in the amount of $14,720. A second contract at the same time provided for the construction of the American Legion Memorial Building atop a knoll known then as “University Hill.” The Duncan family donors believed in the philosophy of New York’s Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmstead who said, “Where building begins, the park ends.” In the 1923 contract with the city, the donors specified that the land could be used only as a...

Although Duniway Park was founded in 1918 to serve residents in south Portland, improvements had been limited and those who used it complained of the odors associated with the landfill that originally established the playground area. In 1934, the Oregon's State Emergency Relief Agency (SERA) authorized funds to improve the park. SERA was funded by the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) during 1934-1935. FERA operated from May 12, 1933 through 1935 when it was replaced by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as the New Deal's primary work relief program. One of the city's major newspapers, The Oregonian, reported that the SERA funded...

The construction of Dunn Field during the Great Depression was enabled by a federal Public Works Administration (PWA) grant. Construction occurred between 1938 and 1939. The ballpark is still in use today. (PWA Docket No. 1619)

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) contributed greatly to the development of the park system in Woonsocket, R.I. Dunn Park benefited from landscaping improvements and construction of a 600-foot stone boundary wall.

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed a 600-foot stone wall along the Mason Street and Asylum Street edges of Dunn Park. As of 2016 the wall remains in great condition. The wall bears four WPA stamps; see map provided for locations and images. It appears that this project took at least one year to finish and was completed in 1939.

Dupont Lodge is a 96 room hotel including lodge rooms and cottages in Cumberland Falls State Park. Amenities: full service restaurant, 3 meeting spaces, outdoor pool, horseback riding (Memorial Day- Labor Day), camping (April-October), hiking trails, gift shop, planned recreation and home of the Moonbow. The hotel is designed in a rustic style similar to Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood in Oregon. Inns and Hotels have been at the location since the 1880's, In 1890, Indianapolis resident Henry C. Brunson bought the Cumberland Falls Hotel. For the next 30 years he and his family operated the resort, which was known as The...

“WPA projects both directly and indirectly affected fish and wildlife. More than 300 fish hatcheries were built or enlarged nationwide. Creating fish hatcheries was important economically, as well as for sport fisherman….Some of the fish hatcheries established or improved by WPA were located in or near Cherokee, Durant, Lawton, Tishomingo, Krebs, Lake Overholser in Oklahoma City, and Mohawk Park in Tulsa. A fish hatchery is on the city lake at Holdenville in Hughes County, where the WPA built a caretaker cottage and office building. With few details of location given, fish hatcheries have been hard to locate 70 years later. At...

The historic Dutch Gardens in New City, New York, part of Courthouse Park, were constructed between 1935 and 1938 with federal Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) labor. This was significant as the only W.P.A. outdoor construction project to be designed and supervised by a woman, Mary Mowbray-Clarke.

The Dyker Beach Golf Course first opened in 1897. It was redesigned by Jon Van Kleek in 1935-1936. On May 7, 1936, the Department of Parks announced that the Dyker Beach Golf Course had been “thoroughly reconstructed with new tees and greens throughout…with relief funds provided by the C.W.A., T.E.R.A. and W.P.A.” The renovation project was part of a larger city wide renovation of public golf courses that was funded by New Deal programs. David Owen, staff writer at The New Yorker, remarks that "Dyker is where Tiger Woods’s father, Earl, learned to play golf, in the early nineteen-seventies. (He was...

Dyker Beach Park, located just south of the Dyker Beach Golf Course and north of the Belt Parkway was assembled in eight stages between 1895 and 1934. In 1942, the WPA and the Department of Parks completed extensive work on the park, much of which is still visible today. A press release announcing the completion of a field house and playground described the finished and ongoing work: "The field house, a one story brick structure, approximately 44' x 100' is located at the east end of the athletic field in a paved plaza designed as a focal point for the park...

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...

Not to be confused with the park of the same name in Dubuque, Iowa, the WPA did extensive work on Eagle Point Park from 1935-1937. Workers deepened and widened Battle Creek, built trails and footbridges, and constructed many stone structures in the park: "Overlooking the Mississippi River and General Zebulon Pike Lock and Dam (No. 13) are the 164 acres known as Eagle Point Park. Visitors are provided with spectacular views of the river and parts of Illinois, and Iowa. Shelter buildings constructed from native stone are available by reservation. The park offers many more amenities, such as: picnic tables, barbecue...

"The park took on a new look in the 1930s when the City hired Park Superintendent Alfred Caldwell. A $200,000 Works Progress Administration (WPA) grant was received and the gifted landscape architect began work. His love of Frank Lloyd Wright prairie architecture is very recognizable in the buildings and gardens. Caldwell's exceptional use of native construction materials, craftsmanship, and unique designs make the park one of the most beautiful in the Midwest."   (https://www.dbq.com) "Architect Alfred Caldwell directed the building of many of the structures at the park, which made use of the limestone found in the area. These include the pavilions,...

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.

WPA Proj. No. 646-02-2-300, $2,200, June 7, 1938. "Make improvements to the City Park in the city of Parlier, Fresno County, including constructing restroom with utility connections, wading pool, swings, sand boxes, and other recreational facilities; grading and oiling roads; landscaping; removing and transplanting trees; and performing appurtenant and incidental work. City-owned property. In addition to projects specifically approved." Total Federal and sponsor funds $3,100, average employed 19. During a February 2018 site visit, the WPA built toilets appeared to be non functional. Newer toilets were located on the other side of the park. There was no wading pool and swings. Most likely,...

One of the original program markers from 1937, installed by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The West Virginia historical marker program began in 1934 with the beginning research for the markers with the intention of placing markers around the state to encourage tourism. Dr. Roy Bird Cook, a Charleston druggist, a longtime commission member, and avocational historian worked on the project. 5,000 sites were collected with 440 markers selected by the commission for placement. Most of these along 44 state and federal highways. The money came from the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In addition to the markers,...