Camp Angeles Crest – Pasadena CA

Description

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Angeles Crest (F-384) was established in Oak Grove Park, in Pasadena, California, July 1936 (Oak Grove Park is now called “Hahamongna Watershed Park”).  The camp was in operation until at least 1941, and for much of that time (perhaps the entire time) it was the home of CCC Company 903.

Camp Angeles Crest and Company 903 were chosen by the CCC’s Ninth Corps Area to create an education model for the Corps.  “Such courses as erosion control, road building, surveying, U.S. Forest Service training, mechanics, etc., were included in the curriculum, and through this vocational training many former enrollees have secured positions in the U.S. Forest Service” (CCC Annual, L.A. District, 1938).

The young men of Company 903 also engaged in the standard work of the Corps, for example fighting fires at “Pickens Canyon, Brown Mountain, Cagle Canyon and Las Flores, Bouquet Canyon, Malibu Mountain, Evey Canyon and the Fish Fork fires” (CCC Annual, L.A. District, 1938).  Company 903 also performed many search and rescue operations.

In 1940, the Pasadena Junior Chamber of Commerce proposed that if the CCC ever abandoned Camp Angeles Crest, the federal government donate the facilities to the city for a summer camp for underprivileged boys.  And in 1945-1946, there was a push to turn the old CCC barracks into “temporary housing for the homeless” (Pasadena Independent, 1946).

We do not know what became of the CCC buildings or the charitable plans to use them. We also do not know the exact location of the camp, but we have placed our marker in the general location of where we think it may have been.  A visit to the park might unveil a more precise location.  The camp site was described as being “located on a lake, in a beautiful setting of mountains and forest” (CCC Annual, L.A. District, 1938), and directions to the camp stated, “The camp is reached by way of Devil’s Gate Dam and Oak Grove Park.  The road through the park leads to a gate marked with the company number.  The gate opens onto a dirt road leading into the Arroyo, where the camp is situated in a grove of oak trees” (The Pasadena Post, 1941).