Dry Lagoon Development, Humboldt Lagoons State Park – Trinidad CA

Description

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) prepared Dry Lagoon State Park for public use. The work was carried out between 1933 and 1937 by Company 1903 at Camp Prairie Creek, from where the CCC worked on state parks all along the north coast of California.

The CCC enrollees built a park boundary fence and demolished the remains of the derelict Dry Lagoon Farm (Dry Lagoon had become a meadow and marsh after being drained for farming in the 19th century). They returned the area to a more native landscape by planting rhododendrons, ceanothus and other coastal vegetation and clearing the beach of trash and driftwood.  Lastly, they constructed an access road and day-use picnic area. (Engbeck, p. 23)

There is another access road and picnic area north of Stone Lagoon, which may also have been which laid out by the CCC.  

Dry Lagoon State Park is now a unit within Humboldt Lagoons State Park, along with Stone Lagoon and Freshwater Lagoon.  The visitor center at Stone Lagoon has been turned into a history and information center by and for the Yurok people, part of the state parks’ effort to recognize the original occupants of California.