• Camp Upton Improvements - Yaphank NY
    Now the site of the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Camp Upton (near Yaphank, New York), was originally "created in 1917 to house and train soldiers for the United States." Camp Upton and its surroundings was the site of New Deal activity throughout the Great Depression. Four CCC camps based at Camp Upton during the summer of 1934 were involved with, among other things, "the clearing of scrub oak, the planting of trees suited to the type of soil ... the building of fire lines and fire breaks and construction of emergency water holes for fire fighting." (2) The CCC...
  • Robert Gaston Herbert Murals - Yaphank NY
    Two WPA murals by Robert Gaston Herbert were painted for what was originally the Suffolk Home in Yaphank, NY and is now a Suffolk County office building. One mural is a painting of Richard "Bull" Smith riding what was probably a mythical bull. The story of his ride around what is today called Smithtown still persists. The legend has it that an Indian sachem would give Smith all the land he could ride around on a bull in one day. The other more historically accurate mural is of Rev. Paul Cuffe, an Indian preacher, preaching to colonists and Indians. Each...