Public Domain Improvements – CCC Camp Hawthorne – Hawthorne NV

Description

The CCC established Camp Hawthorne (DG/G-119) in Nevada as a part of the Grazing Service’s effort to restore the public domain. Vernard “Bud” Wilbur, a recruit stationed at the camp, described the work performed by the CCC in an oral history interview:

“It was hard work, since we came from a city and weren’t used to this type of work eight hours a day…But they fed you well…We graded roads…We dug out a big reservoir about a mile above camp and firmed it all up with rocks and so forth, and then it was filled so that stockmen could use it for drinking water for cattle…A reservoir for cattle was important because…the saline content of Walker Lake is totally unacceptable.

We used to dig cattle dips. Oh heck, they were probably five or six feet wide and maybe ten or fifteen yards long, and we dug them out and lined them up with different types of rock material. They would fill it up with water, and put a disinfectant in it, and run the cattle through there to kill ticks. The Rocky Mountain spotted fever tick was quite predominant at that time in the West. In fact, enrollees were inoculated, and for that particular type of shot you have to take it in the stomach…

Some of it was pick-and-shovel work. A lot of it was pole-type work, especially the barbwire, and hammering with staples. And, if you will, using the terminology of the Marine Corps, ‘grunt-type labor.’

…

What did the camp leave behind for Nevada? I just think all the miles of range with the graded roads…allowed the ranchers access to get to places they were never able to get into before…All the cattle guards that they put across the roads – they are still there today…There were no cattle guards when we started, not that I remember. And all the fencing…

I was at Hawthorne about sixteen months. Oh, I think western people are some of the finest people in the world. They are about as down-to-earth as you can get.”

–Renee Corona Kolvet and Victoria Ford, The Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada: From Boys to Men. University of Nevada Press, 2006.