Blue View – The CCC
/
When I was young, my dad would often tell me stories of his adventures during his CCC days. The Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, was a program started by FDR when the country was in the depths of the Great Depression. This federal program put hundreds of thousands of young, single, unemployed men to work, building parks, planting trees, fighting forest fires, and a host of other projects. Most participants were between the ages of 18-25, and in all, more than 3,000,000 young men worked for the program over the period 1933-1942.
My dad volunteered for three six-month stints. He was paid $30 a month (about $700 in today’s dollars), $25 of which was sent home to help his mom and pop make ends meet, while he was allowed to keep $5. He lived in a barracks in a remote part of eastern Colorado with about 50 other young men and got three meals a day, his medical care, and work clothes. In return, he was expected to put in 40 hours a week of hard labor. He was a farm boy without much in the way of skills - other than a strong back, so most of his time was spent digging irrigation ditches, terraces for erosion control, and planting trees for windbreaks.
He had lots of funny stories about his time with the CCC, which, as you might expect with 50 young men all housed together, mostly related to barracks life. At the end of his eighteen months with the CCC, he had saved enough of his $5 monthly salary to buy a cheap used car, and he left for the big city of Denver to find a “real job”.
In our travels, we’ve encountered a host of projects completed by the CCC. For example, in Glacier National Park, the CCC built sewer and drainage systems, several buildings, trails, and roads. They also lugged and installed over 6-1/2 miles of lead-lined telephone lines over Logan Pass, the first trans-mountain telephone installation.
The CCC Installing Telephone Lines over Logan Pass in Glacier NP
The CCC also made major contributions to many of the Texas State Parks we’ve visited over the years. In addition, Big Bend National Park was, in large part, built by the CCC.
Building a Road in Utah
Some of the other accomplishments of the CCC:
The CCC planted 3.5 billion trees
The country was once heavily forested, but by 1933, unrestricted logging had cut down almost 90% of the original virgin forests. Roosevelt’s “Tree Army” replanted an estimated 3 billion (billion – with a ‘b’) trees.
The CCC created 711 state parks
CCC workers improved 94 national parks and 881 state and local parks by paving roads and constructing trails, campgrounds, and cabins. Of these 881 parks, 711 state parks were totally created from scratch by the CCC.
The CCC spent 6.5 million man-days fighting wildfires
In addition to building more than 3,000 fire lookout towers, the CCC men worked to clear forests of debris in an effort to prevent wildfires and cleaned up in the aftermath of several large wildfires. Teams of firefighters were constantly on watch to prevent and fight wildfires. Sadly, forty-seven young firefighters lost their lives in the fires.
With our entry into WWII, the CCC was phased out. The last camp closed in July 1942, and most of those young men traded their picks and shovels for rifles. The program was considered to be a huge success. Not only did the CCC complete many greatly needed projects, it also provided work and purpose for an entire generation of young men.