CCC Hay Lake Camp – Patten ME

Description

The 159th Company of the Civilian Conservation Corps under the command of Lieutenant Leon Jeffers had a camp at Hay Lake outside Patten, Maine from June 1933 to September 1937. The camp’s main function was fire protection. From Michael Earl Williams in a tribute to his father, a member of the 159th, on the Maine State Archives website:

On October 16, 1936, Mac was assigned to the 159th Company at Fort Williams, Maine and into Hay Lake Camp, about twenty miles north & west of the town of Patten. Very remote and rugged, these wooded, mountainous forests were where work began on building the road south towards Mount Katahdin, a project which was to ultimately intersect with the Greenville Camp’s roadwork. In Patten, Mac progressed from doing hardrock drilling, making holes for the dynamite in the solid rockface, to dynamite engineer as they blasted through the Horse Mountain rockface enroute to Baxter State Park. But first, they had to cut down the huge trees along the route, 25 feet along either side of the center and 20 feet beyond, clearing the underbrush. It was arduous work. Weeks turned into months. Then an acquaintance from his home town, Charlie Rogers, the mess steward, asked Mac if he wanted to be a cook…it was inside work and warm in the cold winters. He accepted this offer and cooked until he left for Greenville. When Hay Lake Camp closed in 1937, he was reassigned to the 160th, the Greenville Junction Camp. (The Maine State Archives, https://www.maine.gov/sos/arc/ccc/tributes.shtml)

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