CCC Camp NHP-2 (former) – Yorktown VA

Description

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp NHP-2 was created at Yorktown VA for the purpose of developing the Colonial National Historical Park (Jamestown Settlement, Yorktown Battlefield, Colonial Parkway). Camp NHP-2 housed CCC Company 323, which had been formed in Fort Washington, Maryland, in Spring 1933, before moving to Virginia.

Company 323, along with four other African American CCC companies, developed Colonial National Historical Park. This work would continue until at least the end of 1941 – essentially, the entire life of the CCC program. The CCC enrollees worked under the direction of the National Park Service (NPS), which had just taken over the job of  caring for military and historical parks from the US Army.

A history of company 323 notes: “Restoration work, landscaping and beautification are the principle jobs of the Yorktown companies, with [Company 323] assigned the particular task of developing the fifteen mile Parkway between Yorktown and Williamsburg, Va.” (Dist. 4, Third Corps Area history, 1937).  (See our project page for Colonial Parkway, here.)

In 1934, Company 323 was named the best CCC camp in Virginia, and the second best in the CCC’s Third Corps Area (an area consisting of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and D.C.).  Notably, the young men of Co. 323 had responded to hurricane devastation while still in Maryland: “the company did storm relief work, moving large fishing boats back to water, draining 2,000 acres of land flooded by the storm, and putting numerous houses back on their foundations” (Dist. 4, Third Corps Area history, 1937).

The location of Camp NHP-2 is described as “one mile from historic Yorktown… on the Battlefield route of the Revolutionary War” and adjacent to Surrender Field (Dist. 4, Third Corps Area history, 1937).

NB: CCC camps in the South were always segregated, but that was not true everywhere until 1935; for further discussion, click here.