Start Year: 1933

Dupont Lodge is a 96 room hotel including lodge rooms and cottages in Cumberland Falls State Park. Amenities: full service restaurant, 3 meeting spaces, outdoor pool, horseback riding (Memorial Day- Labor Day), camping (April-October), hiking trails, gift shop, planned recreation and home of the Moonbow. The hotel is designed in a rustic style similar to Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood in Oregon. Inns and Hotels have been at the location since the 1880's, In 1890, Indianapolis resident Henry C. Brunson bought the Cumberland Falls Hotel. For the next 30 years he and his family operated the resort, which was known as The...

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Boyington served a company of CCC enrollees within the first year of the New Deal. Construction began on the camp outside of Astoria, near the unincorporated town of Olney, in October 1933. The company of 200 "tree troopers" arrived within months of the historic Tillamook Burn that occurred in the summer of 1933. The CCC enrollees provided management and firefighting services on private forest land in the northern Oregon Coast Range. The 1937 report of the Vancouver Barracks CCC District noted that the Company was identified as "a peak camp" by 1935 when its Company number changed from...

New Deal agencies played a major role in the transformation of the narrow and dangerous Wawona wagon trail into a safe and comfortable route into Yosemite Valley. The route from the South Entrance to the Valley floor is 27 miles.  It is one of three access roads to Yosemite Valley, along with the El Portal road and Big Oak Flat Road. The National Park Service and the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) signed a Memorandum of Agreement in July 1925, authorizing the planning and construction of new roads within Yosemite National Park. Surveying was begun in 1928 and initial construction was...

New Deal agencies played a major role in the transformation of the narrow and dangerous Wawona wagon trail into a safe and comfortable route from the South Entrance of Yosemite National Park to Yosemite Valley. As part of this project, a new entry road was built to the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees (Sequoia Giganteum). The National Park Service and the Bureau of Public Roads (U.S. Department of Agriculture) signed a Memorandum of Agreement in July 1925, authorizing the planning and construction of new roads within Yosemite National Park. Surveying was begun in 1928 and initial construction was finished by 1933,...

New Deal agencies realigned and reconstructed the Old Tioga road from 1933 to 1943, from Crane Flat to Tuolumne Meadows.  An important element of the road project was the bridge over the Tuolumne River, just east of the Tuolumne Meadows campground. The bridge was constructed in 1933-34. Funding came from the Public Works Administration (PWA); the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) managed construction, using private companies; and the National Park Service (NPS) oversaw all work in the park. The Tuolumne River bridge is a modern design of steel beams and concrete, but is dressed up with stone siding to accord with the...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) made many improvements around Yosemite National Park during its time there, 1933-42.  Enrollees worked out of two major hub camps and a dozen or so seasonal and 'spike' (temporary) camps. One of the typical activities of the CCC in national and state parks was building and upgrading trails.  Because Yosemite is the second oldest national park, the trail system was already well developed before the CCC arrived.  Nevertheless, CCC teams did extensive maintenance and improvement work on the far-flung trail system of the park.   In particular, after the damage done by the floods of winter 1937,...

In January 1934, an ambitious project of opening up the vast forested area of northern Maine by the construction of a 94 mile road connecting Ashland Maine and Lac Frontier Quebec Canada and called the Brann Scenic Highway was launched. By February, there was unanimous endorsement by the towns of Northern Maine and a survey launched by the Civil Works Administration. Governor Louis J. Brann was the honorary chairman and Maine CWA Executive John McDonough was project director. The Bangor Daily News reported that 125 telegrams from business, civic leaders, and individuals were sent in in support of the project....

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) constructed the Tuolumne Meadows campground in 1933-34, according to a plan laid out by the National Park Service (NPS) and with financing from the Public Works Administration (PWA).  It is the largest campground in Yosemite National Park.  The campground regularized camping at Tuolumne, which had previously been a free-for-all with cars driving across the meadows and people camping wherever they liked. The damage to the meadows had been extensive before the National Park Service brought a halt to the anarchy. First, the NPS restricted camping to designated campgrounds and then implemented a new plan for individual campsites,...

In 1933, the City of Portland gave permission to the federal government to establish a Civilian Conservation Camp (CCC) in its Columbia River Gorge Park. What had been Benson Park became CCC Camp Benson. Between 1933 and 1935, CCC enrollees groomed the surrounding parkland, creating the New Benson Park. Today, the lowland, timbered park serves as a day use picnic area with swimming and fishing in the park’s Benson Lake. It also serves as the western anchor to a system of trails connecting Multnomah Falls to the east and Wahkeena Falls to the south. The work of the CCC established these amenities...

The Civil Works Administration (CWA) planted around 400 street trees in the city of Martinez in the winter of 1933-34. The plantings consisted of walnuts and sycamores.  (Henderson 2014) Susana Park had just been deeded to the city by the Masonic Lodge, which stands nearby.  Many of the trees in the park are probably planted by the CWA.  Rock work at the entrances to the park may well be CWA, but that cannot be confirmed (benches connected to the low rock walls were removed in a recent renovation of the park). A special ceremony was held at Susana Park to plant trees...