The Civilian Conservation Corps

Honoring the boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps who rebuilt America and became men

Olin Bell climbs a small hill to a sandstone building that once housed a well pump at Meramec State Park in Sullivan, Mo. He's on a treasure hunt of sorts.

Peering through his glasses, Bell searches the rock wall, then stops and settles his hand over the faint letters of his name scratched into the mortar.

"I mixed the mortar and had an old nail and did that. I was 18," says Bell, 85, who helped quarry the rock and build the pump house while working with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1939.

Bell is among fewer than 500,000 living CCC veterans—part of an army of 3 million who built America's state and national parks, forests, bridges, dams, fish hatcheries, fire towers, roads and lakes between 1933 and 1942. Their craftsmanship endures in treasured landmarks across the nation, including the three-story pine log headquarters of the Chippewa National Forest at Cass Lake, Minn., the seven-arch bridge at Cumberland Mountain State Park in Crossville, Tenn., and the 24,000-square-foot adobe National Park Service building in Santa Fe, N.M.

The CCC boys developed the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia, built Waterbury Dam in Vermont's Winooski River Valley and planted so many trees—a staggering 3 billion—that they were nicknamed "Roosevelt's Tree Army."

Desperate days

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the corps on March 31, 1933, during desperate days of the Great Depression. Hungry and broken-spirited young men needed jobs and the nation's natural resources needed replenishing and protecting from erosion, fire and excessive timber harvesting.

"I don't know what we would have done without it," says Al Vaughn, 83, of Sullivan (pop. 6,351). "There was no work. I remember very well one cold winter and we got turnips and cornbread. That's what we lived on that winter."

Single, unemployed males, ages 18 to 25, could enlist in the CCC and earn $30 a month. Five bucks went into their pockets and $25 automatically was sent home to their parents.

Vaughn and Bell, who both worked at CCC Camp 2728 near Meramec State Park, get together monthly with other members of the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni to reminisce about their muscle-building work, which included hauling river rock for the fireplace in the park's dining lodge and planting thousands of pine and walnut seedlings that have grown into a forest of towering trees.

"The three-C boys brought this country back into good shape," says Francis Gandy, 81, of Lonedell, Mo., who landed a teaching job at the CCC camp because he was one of the few enrollees who had an eighth-grade education.

"So many boys had never been to a day of school in them days," Gandy adds. "They didn't have shoes to go to school in the winter. Those boys were actually wanting an education and they were a jewel to teach." An estimated 400,000 young men learned to read and write at CCC camps.

Peacetime army

The 4,000 temporary and permanent camps scattered across the nation were run military-style by the War Department, though the recruits carried picks and shovels rather than rifles. The earliest enrollees wore surplus uniforms from World War I. The CCC boys worked 40 hours a week and had their evenings and weekends free. Each camp had a recreation building, education building and infirmary. The men lived in barracks and ate in a mess hall where the chow was "perfect," recalls Gandy.

"Chicken, pork chops, beef roast," he says, his blue eyes widening at the memory. "We had great cooks."

Enrollees enlisted for up to two years, and many parlayed the skills they learned in the CCC into jobs and careers. Vaughn, for instance, learned to drive a truck and spent the next 44 years as a truck driver, primarily for Kroger supermarkets in St. Louis.

The young men lived in close quarters, 40 to a barracks, and had to learn to get along. "You had to be quiet when you put the coal in the stove at night or someone would hit you on the head with a shoe," says Noble Bandy, 85, of Leslie, Mo. (pop. 87).

The discipline they learned prepared enrollees for military duty during World War II, which also spelled the end of the corps in 1942. However, in only nine years, the "boys" had matured into men and left a remarkable visual legacy—from forest restoration in Maine to development of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon—that forever changed the nation's landscape.

Bronze memorials and museums

In 1993, CCC alumni chapters nationwide embarked on a mission to place at least one bronze statue of a CCC worker in every state as a memorial to the achievements of the corps. So far, 35 6-foot statues have been placed at CCC-built parks and former camps. Each statue costs $18,050, plus freight.

"It's a nickel-and-dime thing," says John Selesky, 88, of Rose City, Mich. (pop. 721), chairman of the project spearheaded by the chapter in Grayling, Mich. (pop. 1,952). "The men dig into their own pockets. Sometimes we can get a grant for $1,000 or $2,000."

"Grayling was surrounded by CCCs with 12 camps within 30 miles," Selesky adds.

A glimpse of day-to-day camp life is showcased at the CCC Museum and Research Center in St. Louis. There, a metal cot is neatly made up beside a coal stove, while handsaws, shovels and axes line one wall, and thousands of camp newspapers and photographs depict the young men at work and at play.

The museum and national alumni headquarters are housed at Jefferson Barracks, an induction camp where recruits spent two weeks getting physical examinations, inoculations against typhoid and smallpox, and exercise before being assigned to permanent camps.

"You can find the spirit of the 1930s in this building," says Harry Dallas, 84, the museum's director. "Some fellow will die and his family will send his mementoes here."

Dallas, who has given free museum tours for 21 years, signed up for the CCC after seeing a notice in the Jackson County Courthouse in Murphysboro, Ill. "I was just a kid," he says, "but this work was not haphazard. We had engineers, civilians who directed us."

Dallas marvels at the efficiency of the entire corps. In fact, only 17 days after the CCC was established, the first camp opened: Camp Roosevelt in the George Washington National Forest near Edinburg, Va. (pop. 813).

"This has always been a big part of the history of our community," says Joan Sharpe, 61, president of the Camp Roosevelt CCC Legacy Foundation in Edinburg. "A community close to a CCC camp was infused with about $5,000 a month. The guys came to the lumberyards and the restaurants. A lot of those boys fell in love and married local girls.

"The CCC had a huge impact when America was on its knees economically," adds Sharpe, who believes the nation owes the CCC boys a wealth of gratitude.

"I call them our quiet heroes."

Visit www.cccalumni.org or www.ccclegacy.org to learn more.

Marti Attoun is a Contributing Editor with American Profile.

Upload Your Own Stories, Photos and Videos

Every week, American Profile magazine brings you stories that celebrate the people and places that make America great. Now we want to hear your stories and see your photos, videos and even audio.

 Start Uploading Now!

 

Discuss this Article