Mount Diablo State Park: Campgrounds – Mount Diablo CA

Description

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built several campgrounds in Mount Diablo State Park.  Live Oak, Junction, and Juniper campgrounds come with individual campsites, while the five Group Camps – Buckeye, Barbecue Terrace, Wildcat, Stagecoach and Boundary – provide larger areas without individual sites.  Barbecue Terrace is equipped for equestrian use.

Camp sites usually come with tables and stoves done in rustic style – wood planking on stone or concrete pillars and stone fireplaces or metal ring fire pits. The stone stoves built by the CCC were dubbed “Diablo Stoves” and their design was copied all over California.

The campgrounds were part of the extensive works projects undertaken by the CCC at Mount Diablo State Park from 1933 to 1942.  The State Parks Department is well aware of its debt to the New Deal for improving all the parks existing in the 1930s, as noted in Joseph Engbeck’s (2002) official history of the parks and on the State Parks website – which includes a “CCC heritage adventure” page to guide New Deal enthusiasts.

The state parks website observes that:

“The CCC worked for nine years in Mount Diablo. The work accomplished in the park demonstrates the variety of CCC activities in state parks in general. As visitors travel up the main road which winds to the mountain top, they pass through areas developed for day-use and trails, both of which illustrate the skill and fine craftsmanship of the CCC. Upon reaching the top, the experience is culminated by the fine views and vistas of the surrounding valleys and crowned by the Summit Building one of the largest and most important CCC building in the park system.”

The CCC built access roads, hiking trails, camping and day-use facilities, stone masonry and timber entrance gates, culverts with stone masonry headers, stone and concrete retaining walls, turn-outs for cars and observation areas, residences for the park staff, barracks for the fire suppression crews, a mess hall and other service buildings, a water supply and water distribution system.