Pilgrim Creek Experimental Fire Station Improvements – Shasta County CA

Description

In the early 1930s, the Civilian Conservation  Corps (CCC) made improvements to an experimental fire station established by the U.S. Forest Service in the Shasta National Forest, at Pilgrim Creek just east of McCloud Ranger Station. Pilgrim Creek had long been the site of a tree nursery for reforestation projects, but in 1930 an experimental fire station was added to the site. According to a former forest service fire control officer, the experiments concerned fire detection, control and prevention (see document in photograph below).  The same officer recalled that the CCC built a lab and office, a house and a barn, and it is likely that CCC boys participated in the fire experiments.  

All that remains at the site is a ruined water tower. Local rangers, who provided an old photograph of the tower and access to their archive on Shasta NF history, thought this, too, might be a CCC structure – but it might have preceded the New Deal.

Because CCC boys who did reforestation in Shasta National Forest would likely have been planting trees grown in the Pilgrim Creek Nursery, we include a photo of a CCC team off to plant trees.