Oregon Sites

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the Colliding Rivers Overlook (or Viewpoint), where the North Umpqua and Little Rivers come together. The work as presumably done in 1938, the same year the CCC constructed the Glide Ranger Station just across the road (now the Information Center for the Colliding Rivers Viewpoint). The overlook consists of a small parking area and terraces on two levels for viewing the rivers, with both a ramp and stairway between levels. There is a path to a secondary overlook that is today blocked by trees, and there is a restroom (comfort station) that appears to be...

From late December 1934 through early spring 1935, the State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA) funded improvements to the Columbia Slough that involved raising and leveling a dike on the slough's channel approximately 1.5 miles east of Faloma station. While improving the Columbia Slough dike, it provided work to approximately 190 men for 70 days as part of a work relief program. The City's project description notes the following need: "Dredging operations on this locality had deposited many thousands of yards of excavated material on the banks of the slough. This material was continually sluffing back into the channel. The project consisted...

The bridge over Coos Bay at North Bend OR was constructed with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) in 1934-36.  It was one of five PWA-funded bridges over Alsea Bay, Coos Bay, Siuslaw River, Umpqua River, and Yaquina River that completed the Oregon Coast Highway. All but the Alsea River bridge still stand. The Oregon coast highway was developed after 1914 by the state and county highway departments, but money ran out in the Great Depression before the job could be finished.  With the advent of the New Deal, the PWA offered $1.4 million and a loan of $4.2 million...

Receiving a grant of $9,000 from the Public Works Administration (PWA), the City of Condon announced in 1937 that they would proceed with construction of the new city hall. The city hall design provided room for the fire department and city offices as well as space for the local Masonic Lodge. The Portland architect C. N. Freeman provided the initial design for the building but it changed substantially with construction. The Portland contractor H. J. Settergren built the Colonial Revival style structure with a cupola on the hip roof, a stuccoed first floor and a red brick second floor. A clock-face...

As recorded in a discussion of the Mount Hood National Forest in the US Forest Service publication  The Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps: 1933-1942: "The Cooper Spur Trail Shelter was one of several shelters built by the CCC along the Timberline Trail. It was probably built by the Cooper Spur Camp, a side camp of Camp Wyeth at Cascade Locks. The native stone shclter is located on the Hood River Ranger District, about 1 mile south of theCloud Cap Inn and 50 yards from the intersection of the Timberline Trail and Trail 600-A. The 12 x 12-foot shelter was built...

The Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay was originally constructed in 1936 as the post office for what was then Marshfield, Oregon. Marshfield changed name to Coos Bay on Feb. 15, 1945. The Coos Art Museum (CAM) acquired the building in the 1970s and after fund-raising and renovation work moved the CAM collections. Public Works Administration (PWA) Federal Project No. 324.

In 1937, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees constructed four buildings to serve the Oregon Forestry Department and its work in nearby forests. The buildings associated with the State Forestry Complex, as it was known at the time, included a warehouse building, a crew quarters building, a gas house and a residence. As is the case with other structures built by CCC workers, the buildings are simple wood structures with limited decoration. The cedar lap siding and board and batten gables provide some texture and definition. Only the "pine tree" logo cutout provides ornamentation. The pine tree became a symbol of CCC...

At over 1,000 feet, Council Crest Park occupies the highest point in the City of Portland. From 1907 to 1929, an amusement park occupied that vantage point. Despite its superior position and streetcar access, it took eight years before the City of Portland could acquire it and another year before it could begin to be improved with WPA labor. The Oregonian, one of the city’s newspapers, announced in March 1938 that a crew of twenty-six WPA workers had started “clearing brush, grubbing undergrowth and opening trails through Council Crest Park” so that it might be available for use by summer. The...

In the spring of 1940, Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from CCC Camp Applegate planted 1200 ponderosa pines in an acre of land south of Ashland's Lithia Park on behalf of a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The DAR's leadership chose participation in the "Penny Pine" program as one of the organization's Golden Jubilee National Projects and encouraged such groves across the country. With the help of the CCC, the National Forest Service had started growing pines in nurseries for replanting as a means of revitalizing the nation's forests. Selling them to organizations for a penny a...

The Dead Indian Soda Springs Shelter was built in 1936 by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) on the Ashland Ranger District of the Rogue River National Forest. The structure is significant for its association with the CCC activities in recreational development in southwestern Oregon, as part of the federal government's response to the Great Depression. Submitted as part of a multiple property submission, "U.S. Forest Service Historic Structures on the Rogue River National Forest, Oregon," the Dead Indian Soda Springs Shelter represents its historic context, "CCC/FERA Recreation Development on the Rogue River National Forest 1933 to 1942." The building...

The Dee Wright Observatory in the Willamette National Forest was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and was completed in 1935. It was named after the construction crew's foreman who died a year before the observatory was completed. "The observatory is an open shelter built with lava stone found at the construction site. The viewing windows are cut to specifically highlight the neighboring mountains. These "lava tube" viewing holes allow visitors to easily identify the different Cascade peaks. There is also a 36 inch (90 cm) diameter, bronze azimuth-like "peak finder" on the observatory’s roof to help visitors locate nearby geologic features as...

Originally named the Wolf Creek Tunnel, construction on this 800-foot long tunnel began in 1940 as one of the final steps in completion of the Wolf Creek Highway's path through the Coast Range linking the Portland area with northern Oregon coastal communities. Kibbe and Kearn, a Portland firm, cut the tunnel's bore. Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers completed the stone masonry veneer on the tunnel's east and west portals. The project was completed in 1941. Oregon State Highway engineers designed the rustic-style tunnel portals. The plans were reviewed by National Park Service landscape architects and carried out by WPA masons under...

In the 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) developed the Devil's Punchbowl day-use area for public use.  The improvements included picnic tables, fireplaces, restroom, drinking fountain, water supply, a foot trail and steps to the beach. The majority of these improvements have been repaired or changed over the years, but the popularity of this distinctive viewpoint remains. Visitors are drawn for whale watching and views of its distinctive geology.

The visitor center at Diamond Lake, across from the campground, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1938. It is a typical rustic-style building of the northwest forests, with stone foundation and stairs, wood siding, and tree designs cut into the shutters. It was probably originally built as a Forest Service ranger station or office. The whole Diamond Lake recreation area was still closed for winter when we visited in May 2022.  That meant that the sign and all information panels were still covered in black plastic and we could not see if the site is marked as CCC.

Although Duniway Park was founded in 1918 to serve residents in south Portland, improvements had been limited and those who used it complained of the odors associated with the landfill that originally established the playground area. In 1934, the Oregon's State Emergency Relief Agency (SERA) authorized funds to improve the park. SERA was funded by the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) during 1934-1935. FERA operated from May 12, 1933 through 1935 when it was replaced by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as the New Deal's primary work relief program. One of the city's major newspapers, The Oregonian, reported that the SERA funded...

Although the Eagle Creek Campground opened as the first "auto camp" in the northwest region in 1915, Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) workers made significant improvements to the campground from 1934 to 1937. As early as August 1934, the Oregonian reported that "Eagle Creek Campground is being improved so it will accommodate more picnic parties, through labors of boys from the Benson CCC camp . . . ". Their work included clearing additional campground space, building fireplaces and cutting up fallen snags to create wood for campfires. Headlines from the same Portland newspaper announced later in the fall that a record number of visitors...

In 1937, CCC workers from Camp Cascade Locks began improvements on recently acquired park land to extend the Eagle Creek campground and picnic area to the shores of the Columbia. These twenty-one acres were acquired to provide access to land overlooking Bonneville Dam. This new campground and picnic area is referred to as the Eagle Creek Overlook Group Site. In addition to landscaped trails and new picnic facilities and campsites, the CCC workers built the Eagle Creek Overlook Shelter to serve as a community kitchen, picnic shelter and restroom facility. As a 1984 US Forest Service report states: "The overlook building...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) had a camp at Steamboat Creek from 1933 to 1941. It was a US Forest Service camp serving Umpqua National Forest.  The enrollees made many improvements along the North Umpqua River, including campgrounds, trails and bridges. One of the campgrounds developed by the CCC was at Eagle Rock along Highway 138.

The post office originally held an earlier version of this mural entitled "Post Ride," funded by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts and painted in 1936 by Paul Grellert. During renovation of the post office in the 60's the mural was destroyed. Mr Grellert fortunately was able to paint a recreation of the original mural. The only difference is that in the original, the horse was white.

The historic East Portland Station post office was constructed with federal Treasury Department funds in 1936. The post office houses New Deal artwork.

Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers provided landscaping improvements to the Eastmoreland Golf Course, the City of Portland’s oldest municipal course, during 1937. The $26,348 project budget was made up almost entirely of labor costs. As a Parks Bureau report notes, Parks Superintendent Charles P. Keyser took care in the use of relief funds to expand the City’s budget since “they could be expended only for parks improvements or expansions, not maintenance of existing facilities” (p. 31). The exact nature and location of the improvements are unknown to us.

Ecola State Park offers one of the most widely recognized views of the Pacific on the Oregon Coast. Development of the four miles of coastline for park began in 1934 with the work of CCC enrollees from CCC Camp Saddle Mountain (#1258). A number of CCC workers from Company #1258 were located in the 450-acre park from fall 1934 through the spring of 1936. During that time, under the direction of the National Park Service, they completed improvements including an access road, a water system, and a picnic area. They also constructed new trails through rugged terrain and engaged in forest...

Located between Pendleton and La Grande, Oregon, near the summit of the Blue Mountains along Interstate -84, Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area offers an interpretation of the significance of this location on the Oregon Trail as it provides camping, picnicking, and hiking opportunities. While land acquisition for the park area began in 1925 and continued for nearly fifty years, significant improvement of the park for day use activities took place in the mid-1930s. A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp was located at the site and assigned to the State Park Commission. From 1935 to 1937, CCC enrollees improved the area...

Cabin housed CCC wild-land firefighters. "Fall River Guard Station is situated beneath a canopy of lodgepole pine on the banks of the Fall River in Deschutes National Forest. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930's, the cabin was originally used as an outpost to fight forest fires. The cabin is an ideal setting for relaxation and recreation, and is available for reservation from April to October."

A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) side camp, also known as spike camp, operated at Fish Lake in the Willamette National Forest during the from 1934 to 1939. Side or spike camps allowed the CCC to locate its workers closer to their job sites on special projects and forest fighting. In the case of the Fish Lake CCC camp, workers from CCC Camp Mary Creek (Company 2907) and CCC Camp Belknap (Company 927) were moved to the area during the construction season to improve the operation of the Fish Lake Guard Station for its packing operation. This involved building additional corral space...

By constructing several buildings and the necessary facilities for management of mules and horses, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers played an integral role in  transforming the Fish Lake Guard Station into the Fish Lake Remount Depot. To operate in the rough terrain of the surrounding national forest and nearby wilderness areas, the Forest Service depended on pack animals. The CCC located a side camp at Fish Lake from 1934 - 1939 to improve the Depot for this purpose while assisting in fire fighting and development of recreation opportunities in the Willamette National Forest as well. In 2016, the Fish Lake Remount...

The "rustic"-style Fish Lake Shelter, or "community kitchen" was constructed as part of a larger forest Service campground complex by Company 1682 of the Civilian Conservation Corps (headquartered at Camp South Fork, near Butte Falls) in the summer of 1936. Over sixty men worked on the campground development over a four-month period. (Brown 1971, Review of CCC work projects, 1936). The picnic shelter served the increasing number of people who traveled to Fish Lake during the summer months.

This small, rustic structure was built by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers as the administrative building for Oregon’s CCC headquarters. Today it serves as the Forest History Center of the Oregon State Department of Forestry. Oregon had as many as fourteen CCC camps under the jurisdiction of the State’s Forester during the corps’ operation between 1933 and 1942. When plans for construction of a State Forest Department headquarters began in 1935, a 4.5 acre site had already been acquired to the east of Salem to accommodate the state's CCC headquarters.  Located on the eastern banks of Mill Creek, the CCC headquarters...

Development of a "truck trail," as fire roads were called, was the first priority of the members of #2908 at Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Nehalem when the camp opened in 1935. The camp was located on the edge of the Tillamook Burn. The Tillamook Burn of 1933 was the first of four successive, large forest fires in the northern Oregon Coast Range (1933; 1939; 1945; 1951) that destroyed thousands of acres of what was then private forest land. The 1933 fire burned through 240,000 acres, creating conditions that fueled future fires. At the time of the first fire, vehicle access...

WPA funds and workers constructed the two-story Fossil Elementary School gymnasium in 1936, adjacent to the Fossil Grade School which was built in 1924.  The well-used facility changed in appearance in 1949 when it received a layer of asbestos siding. Community fund-raising and a donation from the Oregon Community Foundation returned the structure to its original appearance during the summer of 2013 with the removal of the asbestos and the application of a new coat of paint by volunteers.

In 1939 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed an athletic field at Portland's Franklin High School as part of a larger commitment ($468,459) to the improvement of Portland public school properties.

From 1939 to 1942, Portland’s Franklin High School benefited from two different Works Progress Administration (WPA) initiatives. One of the projects allowed artists from the Federal Art Project, one of the five independent branches of the Works Progress Administration, to respond to a commission funded by Franklin High School students and alumni ($15,000). Stonecutter George Berry and his assistants sculpted a fifteen feet tall (with pedestal), forty-ton sandstone statue of the school’s namesake. In spring 1942, the “Statesman Scientist” was installed at the north entrance of the school overlooking the athletic field.  The pedestal includes several built-in benches as well...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the ranger station in Glide OR at the confluence of the North Umpqua River and Little River, in 1938. The building style is wood and stone, with plank siding, a typical Forest Service rustic look. The little trees cut in the shutters are charming, and they seem to be a common feature around the National Forests and parks of the northwest. The building was refurbished and reopened as an information station in 1992. The modern North Umpqua National Forest ranger station lies just behind the CCC building.    

The Gold Beach Ranger Station is located at the southern part of town just off of Hwy 101. The Gold Beach Ranger Station is a CCC-built complex of multiple buildings completed in 1937. There is a bronze plaque located at the base of a flag pole in the center of the visitors' parking lot that recognizes the Ranger Station in the National Register of Historic Places on April 8, 1986. The buildings at this site were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, Companies 2523 and 1652 as well as Forest Service employees. They were designed by W.J. Turner and officially opened to...

From 1939 to 1940 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) made improvements and built additions to Gresham High School in Gresham, Oregon, just east of Portland. The additions included a gym, an agricultural building, the north wing of the classrooms, and an auditorium. Michael Schaefer, Gresham High School Principal, estimates that, at the time, 80% of the school was rebuilt with funding provided by the WPA. The primary architectural style of the high school is Art Deco. Teresa Carson of the local Gresham press tells us that "The building originally had hand-crafted doors created by highly-regarded WPA blacksmith Orion B. Dawson, who also created gates at WPA-built Timberline...

Guy W. Talbot State Park, also known as Latourell Falls State Park, entered the Oregon State Park system in 1929 when the Talbot family donated 125 acres of land adjacent to Latourell Falls. Significant development of the park, however, began in 1933 when Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from nearby CCC Camp Benson initiated work. CCC projects improved the park during the second period of the CCC (October 1933 to Arpil 1934), the third period (April to October 1934), and the fifth period (April to October 1935). As noted in a report completed in 1946 under the supervision of the Oregon State...

This structure was constructed with WPA help, but did not receive sought-for PWA funding: "Forty years later, the November 4, 1938 Burns Times-Herald called the courthouse “antiquated poorly arranged.” Voters were deciding whether the county should construct a new $100,000 courthouse, with 45 percent of the cost to be paid by the federal Public Works Administration (PWA). With such largess, the issue passed, and the county judge immediately traveled to Portland to present a request to the PWA official. But the PWA refused the request; later newspaper accounts blamed either incomplete plans or that the county’s part of the funding...

Originally installed in the Burns post office, this mural was one of the Treasury Section's 48-State Post Office Competition murals. "New Deal mural entitled "Cattle Round-Up" painted by Jack Wilkinson in 1941. When a new post office was built in the early 90's, the mural was moved to the 2nd floor court room in the Harney County Courthouse." (flickr)

Harris Beach State Park was one of 45 state parks improved through the work of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees during the New Deal era. The CCC improvements took place there in 1934 and 1935. Only a seventeen-acre park at the time, the CCC workers undertook the early development of the grounds, providing picnic stoves and tables as well as services necessary for day use. While aspects of the park required replacement and reconfiguration as the acreage grew, the park became available to the public thanks to the CCC.

President Roosevelt signed an executive order on December 21, 1936 to establish the Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge in Lake County, Oregon. This area served the largest, remaining pronghorn antelope herd in the United States. Comprised of Hart Mountain and the surrounding desert range, the 215,516 acre refuge included property purchased from private owners as well as land in the public domain. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees helped establish management of the antelope refuge through work conducted over several years. CCC Camp Hart Mountain operated from 1937 through 1939. CCC enrollees constructed new roads and improved the existing one, laid-out horse and...