La Villita

(30:25) color, silent
Unedited footage showing NYA restoration of this small Spanish settlement in San Antonio, Texas. Reel 1, NYA girls make Spanish poster decorations which are put up for the Christmas fiesta. Reel 2, San Antonio mayor Maury Maverick watches NYA boys excavating, leveling ground, and laying brick wall. Shows parts of the restored Alamo and the San Jose Mission. Reel 3, Apache Indians present a Matachina dance at the Christmas fiesta, stone is moved and c...

Creator: Bureau of Training, National Youth Administration, Office for Emergency Management, War Manpower Commission

Year: 1942

Quality: Fair

Jobs Not Handouts

(15:51) color, silent (should be sound)
The NYA trains youths for jobs. Describes modern industrial and agricultural machines (hay balers, threshers, reapers, etc.) which displace manpower. Unemployed youths loiter in hobo gangs. Boys receive training in the use of machine tools, carpentry, and auto mechanics at an NYA center. Girls are trained to cook and make dresses and to become beauticians (manicuring nails, setting hair, and applying facials).

Erosion Control

(11:06) b/w sound
Shows many examples of erosion, its causes, effects, and corrections by the CCC. Shows the construction of rock, wooden, and brush-enforced check dams that control land drainage. Contrasts drainage of lands with and without check dams. Shows activities in the reclamation of large, deep gullies caused by erosion; dams are built, locust seedlings and honeysuckle bushes are planted, and, in extreme cases, sides of the gullies are blasted and tapered pr...

Creator: Civilian Conservation Corps, Division of Planning and Public Relations

Year: 1934

Quality: Fair

Rain on the Plains

(8:08) b/w sound
8 minute film on the aridity of the Great Plains.

Creator: Department of Agriculture, Office of Public Affairs

Year: 1938

Quality: Fair

New York, Pennsylvania, Gettysburg, Chickamauga And Moundsville, Alabama State Parks

(10:53) b/w silent
Shows Chickamauga State Park in Georgia and Gettysburg State Park in Pennsylvania. Guides show tourists over the Civil War battlefields. Archeologists dig up Indian relics and skeletons at an ancient Indian village and burial ground at Moundsville, Ala., measure an exhumed skull with calipers, and study unearthed Indian pottery and basketwork. Shows Indian relics in a museum. CCC yout...

Creator: Department of the Interior, Division of Motion Pictures

Year: 1936

Quality: Fair

Heart of the Confederacy

(10:44) b/w sound
Shows Alabama’s State Capitol in Montgomery, the brass star in the floor of its Senate chamber where Jefferson Davis took his oath of office, the Confederate “White House,” Dexter Ave., the public square, Exchange Hotel, and Union Stockyards. CCC men dig wells in Marengo County State Park. The ROTC drills at Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn. Art students draw, and tourists swim, picnic, sunbathe, cycle, and ride hor...

Creator: Department of the Interior, Division of Motion Pictures

Year: 1937

Quality: Fair

Saving the Beauty of Alabama

(6:00) b/w silent
Shows CCC men at work in Geneva State Park, Alabama. They cross a footbridge with shovels on their shoulders, erect a fence, bridge a stream, clear away dead trees, and replant trees.

We Work Again

(15:52) b/w, sound
Documentary: On the employment of Negroes in Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects. Reel 1: Contrasts scenes of Negroes waiting in breadlines with those employed in Federal work programs such as public building construction, nursery schools and land record indexing. Shows household and health care training programs and general adult education classes. Reel 2: Shows programs available for Negro artists, musicians, writers and actors. William La...

Creator: federal works agency, work projects administration

Year: 1937

Quality: Fair

A Better New York State

(12:59) b/w, sound
On Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects in New York. Shows a reservoir at Albany under construction. Garments for relief families are made in WPA sewing rooms. A marionette show is presented at a Buffalo school. Shows scenes at the West Point Military Academy and the Palisades Interstate Park. Dramatizes the part played by WPA crime laboratory technicians in capturing a safecracker. Shows views of restored Fort Niagara. County roads...

Creator: federal works agency, works projects administration

Year: 1937

Quality: Fair

A Better Michigan

(8:35) b/w, sound
On Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects in Michigan. County roads are graded and surfaced. Shows airports at Lansing and Detroit and emergency landing fields under construction. Women learn rug making and weaving. Braille books are made and proofread. A new state police headquarters is shown. Dramatizes the use of the police radio system in establishing road blocks to capture bank robbers. WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) units ba...

Creator: federal works agency, work projects administration

Year: 1937

Quality: Fair