Sunday, November 16, 2025

Road Trip IV - The Civilian Conservation Corps

 I expect some comments about the things that Pr. Roosevelt got wrong, but I have a real appreciation for one thing he and his Administration got right. The Civilian Conservation Corps. 

Established in 1933, it was a government program run by the Army that accepted young men 17-25 and put them to work. The CCC built Skyline Drive, Big Bend National Park, over 700 state parks, over 3,400 firetowers, fought wildfires, worked at flood relief, and a long list of projects. At it's largest, in 1935, there were 500,000 men involved, overall 3 million served. Most of them starting wearing a different uniform in 1942 and the program was shut down.

We ran into the legacy of the CCC everywhere. The style of the work they did is iconic. Driving into a park, you might only need to see one building to know the CCC had been involved and we saw it over and over.  

 
 I'll bet most of them were a lot skinnier than the buff statue Ms. ASM has taken a shine to. The statue and plaque are a monument to the CCC at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park in North Dakota. We'll visit the park in my next post. 

4 comments:

  1. Mike VNovember 17, 2025 at 4:21 PM

    I had a neighbor that was in the CCC. Here in East Tennessee, they built most of the infrastructure for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Most of their work still stands.

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  2. Old NFONovember 17, 2025 at 5:07 PM

    They also worked in Palo Duro Canyon, and most of their work still stands.

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  3. RichardNovember 18, 2025 at 8:18 AM

    On the other hand, they spread kudzu all over the South and tamarisk all over the West. Not the fault of the worker bees, of course, or even their military commanders. It would be interesting to know who it was that thought this was a good idea.

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  4. MrGarabaldiNovember 19, 2025 at 8:00 PM

    Hey Borepatch,

    I had blogged about the CCC several years ago, there was no way the CCC would work today, back then, people expected to work for their pay and to stay home and freeload was considered "Dishonorable". So they did whatever was necessary and the young learned a trade and sent most of their money to their folks, and also they learned basic military discipline at the CCC. Nowadays it would be considered "racist" to expect people to work and learn a trade and work outside. Back then the fabric of the country was different, in the middle of the great depression, people wanted to work, it was the ethos, now it is "gimme, gimme, gimme" and work is for suckers.

    ReplyDelete

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