Pokagon State Park Development – Angola IN

City:
Angola, IN

Site Type:
Parks and Recreation, Lodges, Ranger Stations and Visitor Centers, Paths and Trails, Campgrounds and Cabins, Shelters, Bathhouses, Landscaping and Tree Planting

New Deal Agencies:
Work Relief Programs, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

Started:
1934

Completed:
1942

Description

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) developed Pokagon State Park into a fully-fledged recreational park in the 1930s, planting thousands of trees, building trails, establishing a group camp, and constructing park buildings, including a gatehouse, bath house (with beach), saddle barn, two-story shelter house, and more.

CCC Company 556 occupied Camp SP-7 at Pokagon from 1934 until 1942.

To enhance the outdoors experience, projects exhibited designs that were rustic and harmonious with their surroundings, using native materials and adhering to guidelines established through the National Park Service.

Pokagon has been home to the longest running annual CCC reunion in the country and continues the tradition by staging an annual CCC Remembrance day the last Sunday in July.

The park is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Most of the facilities in the park were built by the CCC (see list to the right). The only  buildings that are not CCC are the Inn, originally built in the 1920s; the Nature Center, built 1984; and the current gatehouse.  

Only two sites are individually marked as CCC: the shelter house and the former CCC camp. But the former gatehouse is now a CCC Pocket Museum with exhibits about the CCC’s work in the park and beyond and there is a permanent exhibit in the Nature Center  which lists all the structures the CCC enrollees worked on.

 

Source notes

Glory-June Greiff, People, Parks, and Perceptions: A History and Appreciation of Indiana State Parks. DNR Historic Site and Structures Inventory, 19xx.

Site originally submitted by Indiana Division of Historic Preservation/Nicole Cory on July 11, 2014.

Location Info


450 Lane 100 Lake James
Angola, IN 46703
Steuben County

Coordinates: 41.71036985701456, -85.02178

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