The C.C.C. State-by-State: Florida

In Roosevelt’s Forest Army, Perry Merrill notes that an average of 21 CCC camps operated in the state of Florida with an average distribution among the technical services as follows: 7 National Forest camps, 9 Private Forest camps, 1 Animal Industry camp, 1 Biological Survey camp and 5 State Park camps. Merrill also notes that just under 50,000 Florida men were given employment by the CCC including 45,887 junior and veteran enrollees, 101 Indians and 3,026 so-called non-enrolled personnel which included camp officers and supervisors.

We can compare Merrill’s overall average to numbers cited in a couple of Annual Reports to get an idea of how the camp distributions ebbed and flowed between 1933 and 1942. For example, the Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work for fiscal year 1937 lists a total of 23 CCC camps in the state of Florida, broken out as follows:
National Forest: 7
Private Forest: 9
Animal Industry: 1
Biological Survey: 1
State Park: 5
So during fiscal year 1937 the number of CCC camps in Florida was slightly above the overall average of 21 cited in Merrill’s Roosevelt’s Forest Army.

Compare this to the distribution of 16 total Florida CCC camps as reported in the 1939 Annual Report of the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps:
State Park: 7
National Forest: 4
Private Forest: 4
Biological Survey: 1
So for FY 1939 Florida was below the average as reported in Merrill’s overall camp total. You’ll also note that the “animal industry” camp was disbanded some time in the intervening years and that work on private forest projects decreased. (It’s also interesting to see that the title of the Annual Report was changed to reflect the program’s name change from Emergency Conservation Work to Civilian Conservation Corps.)

So what exactly was the work of the CCC enrollees at Florida’s seemingly short lived animal industry camp? The Federal Security Agency’s Annual Report of the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps for 1942 offers some insight into this type of CCC camp. According to the report, CCC camps were established at Bureau of Animal Industry sites located in Auburn, Alabama, Dubois, Idaho, Jeanerette, Louisiana, Beltsville, Maryland, Miles City, Montana and in Brooksville, Florida. The report describes the work of these camps in some detail:
These stations are research stations devoted to finding better practices in breeding, feeding, and management of domestic farm animals or poultry, and in disease prevention and control. All but one of these stations are located on tracts of land given to this bureau for experimental use. In all cases the land, buildings, and other facilities had to be adapted or newly planned for the best advantage of the research work. This is a costly process in cases of major field stations, and the temptation always has been to begin the livestock research work to which the station was dedicated before adequate or ideal plant facilities became available…The CCC camps happened to come when the unusual assistance which they could give was sorely needed at several stations…In short, through the unusual and able assistance of CCC camps at several of the major field stations, the Bureau of Animal Industry now has field stations better equipped for the research at hand, and therefore better able to give a good account of the money appropriated to it for livestock research work.

In the case of the Brooksville, Florida research station, the land for the facility was donated in 1932, prior to the establishment of the CCC, and according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture news story, the facility now covers about 3,000 acres and employs 20 full time state and federal employees. Given this explanation, it seems likely that CCC enrollees helped with setting up the facilities at the experimental station and once the site was up and running, Florida’s animal industry camp was no longer necessary; consequently we see the animal industry camp listed in the 1937 Annual Report but missing from the 1939 report.

Using the fiscal year 1939 Annual Report for monthly enrollment, the figures break out like this:
July 1938: 4,986
August 1938: 4,845
September 1938: 4,057
October 1938: 4,789
November 1938: 4,599
December 1938: 4,149
January 1939: 4,660
February 1939: 4,487
March 1939: 3,029
April 1939: 4,548
May 1939: 4,377
June 1939: 3,922
These are the monthly totals for enrollment in the state of Florida – not the total number of CCC workers working in the state each month.

The same Annual Report (FY1939) lists individual totals for work accomplished and in that listing we find that between July 1938 and June 1939, CCC enrollees in Florida installed over 222,000 square yards of stream and lake bank protection on one hand but only built six camp stoves or fireplaces. Other work completed within this wide range of accomplishments included:
Open ditches: 10,100 linear feet
Fighting forest fires: 6,754 man days
Educational, guide or contact station work: 2,312 man days
Excavation of earthen channels, canals and ditches: 62,618 cubic yards
Beach improvement: 6 miles

The Florida Park Service Alumni Association has a nice page dedicated to documenting CCC park staff. It’s a work in progress but clearly their dedication to the project shines through.

The Friends of Florida State Parks has a wonderful page devoted to the CCC on their website. Here, among other things, you’ll learn that the first CCC camp in Florida’s state park system was established at Highlands Hammock State Park in 1934.

Many folks, including me for a time, labor under the misconception that the World War I veterans killed in the 1935 hurricane were CCC enrollees when in fact they were assigned to several Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) camps in the Keys. (For an example, click here. I’m sure the author’s intentions are good in this case, but the article erroneously states that those killed in the Florida hurricane were CCC enrollees and that Robert Fechner was head of the CCC over the course of its entire lifespan, neither of which was the case.) Certainly the fact that the World War I veterans were FERA workers and not CCC enrollees doesn’t diminish the tragedy in any way and indeed there is a connection in that CCC enrollees helped with clean up and recovery of bodies in the days and weeks following the horrific tragedy. If anything, this long-standing misconception is simply a good illustration of how so many of the New Deal programs have gotten lumped together over time and it may support the claims of some who say the CCC garners some praise that should rightly go to agencies like FERA and the WPA. For a great, accurate account of the Bonus Army and the veteran’s FERA camps that grew out of that episode, read The Bonus Army: An American Epic by Dickson and Allen.

I’ll close out this account of CCC work in Florida with a mention of some CCC enrollees who did die while working in Florida. The December 3, 1933 issue of the CCC newspaper Happy Days reported that enrollee Michael G. Kovich of Company 295, Sumatra, Florida was shot in a nearby town. Kovich’s death is among the first 20 deaths reported in Happy Days during the lifespan of the CCC.

On May 19, 1934, Happy Days reported the suicide of an enrollee by the last name of Fraser at the District G Headquarters in Barrancas, Florida.

September 15, 1934 issue of Happy Days reported on the drowning death of Albert Oliva of Company 262 at Sebring, Florida.

Finally, jumping ahead in time, the January 13, 1940 issue of Happy Days reported on the death of James Devoe from Company 4453 at Deleon Springs, Florida. Enrollee Devoe was killed in an auto accident while on leave.

When we think back on the CCC and consider it’s broad scope and far reaching impact and the numbers of men associated with its work, it’s a small wonder than more enrollees weren’t killed in those years between 1933 and 1942.

Sources: As with all the posts in the State-By-State series the map is from Stan Cohen's book The Tree Army. The campstove plan is from a 1930s book on construction of camp stoves. I'm also indebted to Bob Audretsch for his indexing of the Happy Days newspaper.

The C.C.C State-by-State: District of Columbia

In my introductory post for this series I noted that I planned to rely heavily on Perry Merrill’s summary of benefits to the states in his book Roosevelt’s Forest Army and I’m sticking to that plan, especially in the case of CCC work in the District of Columbia, which is difficult to research on a good day.

For all of its seeming geographic insignificance, the District of Columbia (“DC”) was worthy of two CCC camps according to Merrill and an astounding 11,470 DC men were given employment as a result of the CCC (to say nothing of the many, many politicians who managed to keep getting reelected to at least some degree because of their votes in favor of funding the CCC). A partial statistical breakdown of CCC accomplishments in DC include construction of 20 bridges, 47 camp stoves and fireplaces, 94 table and bench combinations and over 76,000 linear feet of pipe, tile lines and conduit for flood control.

As was already mentioned, specific information regarding the work of the CCC in the District of Columbia is difficult to come by. The CCC Legacy Camp List does not include the District of Columbia, or Alaska or Hawaii. The list does indicate that DC was located in the Third Corps area along with Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

Merrill refers to two specific CCC work projects in DC: the National Arboretum and Rock Creek Park. At the moment the website for the National Arboretum contains just one passing reference to the CCC, in an article about botanist Oliver Freeman. (You can see that article here.) There is a reference to the National Arboretum in Chapter 5 of the National Park Service Administrative History of the CCC. It seems that a company of black enrollees was selected to march in President Roosevelt’s 1937 inaugural parade. As for Rock Creek Park, you’ll find an all too brief reference to the CCC in the Administrative History of Rock Creek Park. Indeed, it’s brief enough that I’ll quote it at length here:
A Civilian Conservation Corps contingent then occupied the site (Camp Good Will), designated Camp NP-14, Rock Creek Park. Before and during its use of the area, the CCC performed a range of improvements in the park and Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. Its enrollees cleared the creek channel and stabilized its banks with riprap, planted trees and shrubs, built more than two miles of bridle path with log hurdles for jumping, and constructed an addition to the Park Police lodge, which had been built with a $13,500 public works allotment on Beach Drive below Joyce Road in 1936.

Believe it or not, the Annual Reports do list enrollment figures for the District of Columbia, so given a lack of other detailed information on the work of the CCC in Washington, D.C., I’ll post the monthly enrollment figures for 1937 and 1939.

The 1937 Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work listed the monthly enrollee totals for the District of Columbia for fiscal year 1937 as follows:
July 1936: 845
August 1936: 755
September 1936: 656
October 1936: 850
November 1936: 811
December 1936: 753
January 1937: 1,008
February 1937: 908
March 1937: 680
April 1937: 856
May 1937: 776
June 1937: 704
Average: 800/month

Two years later the numbers aren’t vastly different. The 1939 Annual Report of the Director the Civilian Conservation Corps listed the total number of CCC enrollees who enrolled in the CCC from the District of Columbia as:
July 1938: 822
August 1938: 778
September 1938: 700
October 1938: 858
November 1938: 804
December 1938: 735
January 1939: 916
February 1939: 892
March 1939: 645
April 1939: 853
May 1939: 809
June 1939: 661
Average: 789/month

So, in fiscal year 1937, an average of 800 CCC enrollees hailed from the District of Columbia on a month-to-month basis. In fiscal year 1939 that monthly average slipped slightly to 789 enrollees per month, and for some reason January was the enrollment high water mark both years. I’ve noted elsewhere in this series that CCC enrollment figures ebbed and flowed in response to a number of factors; for example in areas where annual crops were gathered, it is often found that local enrollment in CCC camps dropped off right about the time that workers were needed to bring in that year’s harvest. It’s intriguing to consider why enrollment in Washington D.C. suddenly spiked in January of 1937 and 1939.

Certainly, the National Arboretum seems to have been the primary CCC work site (the camp was designated NA-1) in the District of Columbia and you’ll find a complimentary few paragraphs are devoted to that work in the 1942 Annual Report of the Civilian Conservation Corps (fiscal year 1942). Here are the details from that report in a section titled Plant Industry and the CCC:
Two CCC camps were assigned to the Bureau of Plant Industry. One of these, within the District of Columbia, since 1934, has been doing preliminary improvement and construction work for a national arboretum. The other at Cheyenne, Wyoming, started in 1935, has been working at a federal horticultural field station.

The national Arboretum is located in Northeast Washington just off the Bladensburg Road. The CCC company did a large amount of permanent work, all essential to the main purpose of the Arboretum. This camp came to the Arboretum in 1934 and was closed on December 15, 1941.

Much of the Arboretum land is in an early stage of development, and the camp contributed very substantially in this basic development work. Construction of roads, drainage, water systems, and fencing have been of primary importance. The fencing of the entire tract of some 400 acres with strong, high and permanent wire fence, with concrete curbing, was one of the outstanding CCC jobs. Five pithouses and a combination heating plant and potting shed were constructed by CCC labor. Important landscape projects have been the construction of three ponds and extensive grading in certain areas. Much soil perperation (sic) and planting of trees and shrubs was done. At this particular stage in the development of the National Arboretum the CCC work was decidedly a major contribution.

Given the glowing summary of the CCC’s work at the National Arboretum, it seems a bit sad that their current website doesn’t include any history on camp NA-1. Perhaps as we approach the 80th anniversary of the creation of the CCC in 2013, the folks at the National Arboretum will discover some of their own history and share it with the rest of us.

(Perhaps it is a commentary on the lack of available information on the work of the CCC in D.C. that there are no maps or photos of CCC work there that I have been able to track down. I’m sure they are out there somewhere.)

The C.C.C. State-By-State: Arkansas

In Roosevelt’s Forest Army, Perry Merrill devotes a good deal of space to a detailed accounting of CCC work in Arkansas (nearly 2 and a half pages, whereas Arizona garners barely a half page). We’ll find as we progress through all the states and territories that some places simply have better documentation of their CCC work and perhaps this is what Mr. Merrill encountered when he created his entry for Arkansas.

Let’s start with some simple statistics from Roosevelt’s Forest Army. An astounding 62, 882 individuals from all states worked in the CCC in Arkansas between 1933 and 1942. In that time, the CCC built 4,956 bridges of varying types, strung 6,956 miles of telephone line, built 82,190 check dams and made forest stand improvements to some 496,000 acres of land.

The 1937 Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work includes a state-by-state monthly breakdown of the numbers of enrollees from each state. Enrollment in Arkansas for fiscal year 1937 stacked up like this:

July 1936: 8,539
August 1936: 8,144
September 1936: 6,226
October 1936: 11,049
November 1936: 10,681
December 1936: 10,307
January 1937: 10,291
February 1937: 9,976
March 1937: 7,471
April 1937: 10,329
May 1937: 9,931
June 1937: 9,295

(Keep in mind that these figures represent the number of enrollees who enrolled in Arkansas, not the number of enrollees actually working in Arkansas on a month-to-month basis. The title of the table cited is "Total enrolled strength of the Civilian Conservation Corps by States in which enrolled...")

Merrill notes that the average number of CCC camps in Arkansas was 37 and at one time 64 camps, employing 13,000 men were in operation in the state. (The map illustration is a detail from Stan Cohen’s book The Tree Army. The map from which this was taken was a 1938 illustration of CCC camps nationwide. I’ve isolated Arkansas and highlighted the camps with colored blocks to make it easier to read. Remember that this map doesn’t show every camp that operated in the state of Arkansas between 1933 and 1942; better to look at this as a snapshot of camp locations in 1938.)

Among the noteworthy accomplishments specifically cited by Merrill: The construction of 80 forest lookouts statewide, a three thousand seat amphitheatre in Crowley’s Ridge State Park, soil conservation work statewide, including the planting of sod, construction of check dams and planting of trees. At the White River Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, CCC enrollees planted grasses to provide food for the birds.

There is a nice history of the CCC in Arkansas entitled (appropriately) "The Civilian Conservation Corps in Arkansas, 1933-1942 available on line. Written by Sandra Taylor Smith, this piece, though brief, is surprising in its detail and even includes a nice bibliography. You’ll note that Perry Merrill’s book is listed in the bibliography, but strangely, there is no reference to John Salmond’s landmark study from the 1960s.

Smith notes that Arkansas was in the Seventh Corps Area with the Corps headquarters located in Omaha, Nebraska. Smith also points out that enrollees were sent to what was then Camp Pike in North Little Rock before being given their permanent camp assignment. Smith’s article is a useful piece of CCC research and an asset to anyone wishing to gain an insight into the work of the CCC in Arkansas.

One sad aspect of the CCC program that we’ll encounter as we progress through this state-by-state history is the incidence of racism in the selection, enrollment and deployment of minority groups, especially blacks and seemingly especially in the southern states. One could argue that the CCC’s only true failing was in the area of racial integration and equality. Though the legislation that created the Civilian Conservation Corps included language prohibiting discrimination based on race, problems cropped up almost immediately during the initial selection process in the individual states. For an excellent account of these initial problems and indeed a valuable discussion of the problem of racism in the CCC, see John Salmond’s groundbreaking work from the 1960s, The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942: A New Deal Case Study. Of particular interest with respect to racial policy in the CCC is Salmond’s discussion in Chapter 5, “The Selection of Negroes, 1933-1937” (A copy of Salmond’s important work is now available online and can be viewed here.)

As for the issue of racism in Arkansas’s selection process, Salmond wrote:
Similarly (compared to Georgia), after investigating an NAACP complaint of discrimination in Arkansas, Persons (Frank W. Persons, director of CCC selection nationwide) again threatened to withhold quotas. The state’s indignant relief director, William A. Rooksbery, unequivocally denied the charge that no Negroes had been selected. No less than three had in fact been enrolled, he protested, but Persons was unimpressed, and told him so. The chastened state official promised to induct more within the following few weeks.

In a region of the country where blacks made up as much as 50 percent of the total population, the lack of recruitment of blacks for work in southern CCC camps is disgusting today, but must be viewed in light of the overriding system of prejudice at the time. Further, cases of racism were not confined to the southern states by any means and as we progress through the state-by-state histories we’ll see that camps were segregated by race nationwide and that all-black camps ran into local opposition in such seemingly progressive regions as California.
Salmond goes on to point out that, beyond the initial difficulty of actually getting young blacks selected and enrolled into the CCC, Arkansas citizens “accepted with equanimity many Negro camps.” But in the end, CCC Director Robert Fechner never forced the issue and, if local protests erupted due to the all-black nature of a CCC camp, he would order the camp closed or moved onto an Army reservation, for, as Salmond writes in Fechner’s own words, he was “a Southerner by birth and raising” and thus he, “clearly understood the Negro problem.”

For the Forest Service perspective on CCC work in Arkansas, be sure to visit their online history The Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture also has terrific information about the work of the CCC in Arkansas, including some pictures!

Larry Sypolt’s invaluable book Civilian Conservation Corps: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography lists a couple of resources directly related to the CCC in Arkansas under the section of the book devoted to the 7th Corps Area. If you can’t find these articles or books on line, you might try your local librarian (For example, the Sandra Taylor Smith article referenced above, is listed in Sypolt and is available on line. Other sources may not be so easy to find, but will likely prove worth the effort if your project relates directly to the work of the CCC in Arkansas.) Among the Arkansas-related sources listed in Sypolt:
“Two Decades of State Forestry in Arkansas,” by Fred H. Long, published in Arkansas Historical Quarterly 24:3 (1965).
“A Brief History of Camp Sage: CCC Camp P-76, Stella, Arkansas,” by Burney B. McClurkan, Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department, 1994.
“The Civilian Conservation Corps in Arkansas: 1933-1934,” self-published by Charles A. O’Dell in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1995.

We’ll close this entry in the State-By-State series with a brief personal testimonial from an enrollee in Arkansas. In 1934 the American Forestry Association published a nifty little book entitled Youth Rebuilds: Stories from the C.C.C. The book is a series of stories or testimonials from CCC enrollees across the United States and it offers an interesting glimpse of the program when it was still in its earliest, formative years. Included in the book is a piece written by Robert R. Ross, an enrollee in Company 741 at Crystal Springs, Arkansas. (The first CCC camp to be established in Arkansas according to the Sandra Taylor Smith article previously noted.) Young Robert wrote, in part:

Every day in the woods I come across something that can be applied to the text of some book I have read. Thus, by observation and study, I am fitting myself for my chosen work. I now understand fully that phrase – “fresh start in a healthful occupation in the open.” The work and sunshine have been beneficial to my health beyond all measure. I have gained in weight and strength. I have felt better than at any time in the last few years. Maybe it is that full feeling I experience three times each day!

If you’d like to get some background on the purpose and scope of this series, you can read the initial entry in the State-By-State series by clicking here.

The photo is a detail from a larger image of Camp Nodak near Plainview Arkansas. The photo is dated November 1933. The 1934 Christmas menu from the Crowley’s Ridge camp lists the enrollees and Local Experienced Men at the camp and is from my document files.

An Invitation from the Past: Natchaug River Bridge, Connecticut

Thumbing through a three-ring binder from the bookshelf, I came across a neatly folded invitation to a 1934 bridge dedication. In late May 1934, the Honorable Andrew T. J. Clark in Brooklyn, Connecticut was invited to the planned opening of a bridge built across the Natchaug River by the boys of Camp Fernow.

The invitation lists the governor of Connecticut along with the commander of the 3rd Corps area and the director of the US ECW, Robert Fechner as guests of honor. Today I wonder if these esteemed gentlemen did in fact attend the ceremony and I wonder if Mr. Andrew Clark made the journey.

A Google search for images of the bridge yielded nothing. The bridge does receive mention on a Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection website and I’m sad to read that the bridge is no longer deemed safe for vehicle or pedestrian traffic. Perhaps it crumbles away in plain sight of visitors to the Natchaug State Forest. My hope is that the bridge is at least marked with interpretive signage.

Elsewhere on the web you’ll find a personal remembrance of life at Camp Fernow posted at the CCC Legacy website. Former CCC enrollee Bill Beckett writes fondly of his time helping construct the bridge using the simple tools and equipment available at the time – unlike today when cranes and heavy equipment are the norm. He recollects with pride that the bridge is still in use as of his writing in 2009. One has to wonder what has taken place in the last year or so to make forest officials decide to close the bridge. I also wonder if Mr. Beckett was present at the dedication ceremony, standing proudly with his fellow enrollees that day in June 1934. Most certainly there were speeches and, as the invitation states, a tour of the CCC camp. Maybe a lunch was served to guests and visiting dignitaries. It’s important to remember the useful part these dedications and open houses played in the life of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Camps were often filled with young men from out of state and in an era when older residents may have rarely traveled outside their own county, having “outsiders” was a potential disruption that could cause friction if not handled with tact and diplomacy. Thanksgiving and Christmas parties, dances and dedications open to the public were all means of making local residents feel welcome and a useful tool to show folks the value of CCC work in their area. The ceremony to mark the opening of the Natchaug River bridge was no doubt just such an event.

When we think of fall colors, we often think of places like Connecticut and in our mind’s eye there is often a stone bridge mantled in a shroud of red and gold fallen leaves, a crisp cold forest stream coursing below, its waters soon to be frozen as winter nudges closer. That is what I’m thinking of now as I draw the understandable parallel between the lifespan of this stone bridge and the lifespan of the men who built it. They are in the autumn of their years, all of them, and it will fall to those of us who remain to preserve their important work in the form of stone bridges like the one across the Natchaug River on Fernow Road in a scenic corner of Connecticut.