Campground Improvements - Rocky Mountain National Park CO

City:: Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
Site Type:: Parks and Recreation, Campgrounds and Cabins
New Deal Agencies:: Work Relief Programs, Conservation and Public Lands, National Park Service (NPS), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
Started:: 1933
Completed:: 1941
Designer:: E.P. Meinecke
Quality of Information:: Good
Marked:: No
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) made improvements to three of the existing campgrounds in Rocky Mountain National Park: Endovalley, Aspenglen and Glacier Basin. These three were the most popular campgrounds at the time and their facilities were antiquated, so CCC stepped in to upgrade them (later, they would add a new campground at Timber Creek on the west side of the park). (Brock, p 40)

The campgrounds were all renovated according to National Park Service standards embodied in the writings of E.P. Meinecke – Camp Ground Policy (1932) and Camp Planning and Camp Reconstruction (1934).

In 1933-34 CCC enrollees deployed logs and boulders to mark off parking areas, camping spaces, and other important spaces in the campgrounds. In 1936-37, they constructed brick fireplaces and picnic tables; as one CCC veteran Dean McMurphy remembered, “We built hundreds of them – and we built them darn good.” (Brock, p. 41).

In later years, CCC enrollees added comfort stations and water supplies to these, and possibly other, campgrounds (Brock, p. 41).

[The entrance station and comfort stations at Aspenglen Campground, shown here, could be CCC work, but we do not have verification]

Source notes

Julia Brock, A History of the CCC in Rocky Mountain National Park. Report to the Rocky Mountain Nature Association and Rocky Mountain National Park, 2005. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/rmnp/ccc.pdf

Site originally submitted by Richard Walker on August 14, 2022.