The C.C.C. State-By-State: A Progress Update

One-Fifth of the Way There

With last week’s posting of the Florida entry in the State-By-State series, we’re roughly 1/5th of the way through the U.S. states and territories. Now might be a good time for me to catch my breath, perhaps update the stated goals and purpose of the series and this may be a good opportunity to point out some changes that have already been made to the individual state entries already posted.

Statistics, Personal Narratives and Illustrations
Initially, I’d made it clear that I planned to rely heavily on the individual summaries of state CCC work found in Perry Merrill’s book Roosevelt’s Forest Army and I’ve done so. However as the postings have progressed, I’ve found that three Annual Reports in my collection are serving as a very useful set of source materials to supplement Merrill’s snapshot of state work. This has had the effect of making the posts a bit heavy on numerical statistics and lighter on individual camp accomplishments, which may not be a benefit to the casual reader, however I’m hoping that the more detailed camp totals, work statistics and enrollment numbers represent data that is largely unavailable to local researchers – especially to high school and undergraduate students – who may be seeking obscure statistical data for papers, reports or presentations. The sort of information that may be boring to most readers will be a boon to the occasional scholar who seeks to include such details in their work. As an extension of this, if you are a scholar who is doing research and you’d like to have scanned images from the Annual Reports that I cite in the State-By-State series, post a comment and let me know how to reach you and I’ll gladly do what I can to get the information to you. (I wouldn’t have called this a “resource” page if I hadn’t intended to share useful – if sometimes mundane – information.)

Another benefit to using numbers from the Annual Reports as companion data for the project information in Roosevelt’s Forest Army has been the ability to compare Merrill’s “snapshot” of CCC work against the “snapshot” of work shown in the annual reports for 1937, 1939 and to a lesser degree, 1942. The comparisons aren’t meant to validate or discredit Merrill’s numbers, but more to show trends in the program between 1933 and 1942. Merrill’s state work summaries typically list an average number of camps in a state, where the Annual Reports for 1937 and 1939 provide a more detailed breakdown of the camp totals for their respective fiscal year. An average is useful, but I hope that researchers will find it’s also useful to know if the totals for 1937 and 1939 are above or below the average cited by Merrill.

To offset some of the heavily statistical information in the individual posts, I’m working to include personal histories of CCC enrollees whenever possible, and will go back to add those personal histories to the state’s already posted when necessary. One great source of these personal narratives has been the book Youth Rebuilds, which was published in 1934. I’m also throwing in data on selected cases of CCC fatalities in each state as they become available.

Something else that I’ve found as I’ve worked through the first 10 state articles is that photographs aren’t always easily accessible or those photos that may be available are covered in copyright restrictions. I’m not in the habit of pirating images from other sites, so more than likely you’ll find that I include links to sites that have useful or interesting photos of CCC work in particular states, rather than lifting the images from those sites for use here at the CCC Resource Page. Ultimately, visitors here will have to choose whether or not they choose to use images found on linked sites. This issue has become more important to me lately, as I’ve seen some of my own work and images used on other sites without a proper citation (to say nothing of the fact that the user took the material without asking first). With this in mind, visitors here need to keep me honest, too. If you see images or references not properly cited or credited here at the CCC Resource Page, please post a comment explaining the problem so that I can remedy the situation.

Updates to Past Posts

Since starting the State-By-State series at the first of the year, I’ve revised just two entries: Alabama and Arkansas. The Alabama entry was updated to include more information regarding Robert Pasquill’s book The Civilian Conservation Corps in Alabama – specifically its lack of detailed references to racism in the CCC. The Arkansas entry was updated to include a better explanation of monthly enrollment figures. Additionally, I added a brief discussion of racism in the selection and deployment of black enrollees in Arkansas. In both cases, the new information on racism grew out of a post I did in honor of Black History Month over at the Forest Army blog.

To date, roughly two and a half months into this project, I’ve not had any comments posted regarding the State-By-State series, however it seems that visitor hits are higher lately on average. Please, if you enjoy something you see here, if something was especially helpful to you in your research, if you have questions or need greater detail, or if you wish to offer constructive criticism, please leave a comment and if you need more information, make sure there’s some way I can contact you. My goal with this blog is to create a resource for CCC researchers of all ages, to help grade schoolers, high schoolers and college scholars in their search for information on the Civilian Conservation Corps.

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: Delaware

The state of Delaware was situated in the 2nd Corps area along with New Jersey and New York. In Roosevelt’s Forest Army, hidden about halfway through his rundown of CCC work in Delaware, Perry Merrill tosses out a unique factoid that sets Delaware apart from all other states and territories. Basically, Merrill notes that Delaware was the last state to get CCC camps. Evidently, the purchase of just over 1,000 acres for the Redden State Forest cleared the way for establishment of CCC camps so the first Delaware camp wasn’t established until October 1933 during the second enrollment period. That first camp, Camp S-53-D was quickly occupied by Company 2233V, company of World War I veterans who were moved from a project in nearby Vermont. So, while the total available information about the CCC in Delaware may be limited, there will always be that one interesting statistic: Delaware was the last state to have CCC camps.

(Now, here’s a question to ponder. It has long been thought that CCC camps were numbered in the order that they were established within each state. Thus, the first camp to be established in Delaware would be S-1-D, or so one would assume. Why was Delaware’s first camp numbered “53”? I’ve no idea but thought it would be an interesting question to toss out there.)

The State of Delaware has a scanned image of typewritten song lyrics penned by an enrollee at a CCC camp in Lewes, Delaware. The website notes that Delaware’s CCC camps were located in Lewes, Magnolia, Leipsic, Georgetown, Slaughter Beach, Frederica and Wyoming and that one of the main projects of the CCC was construction of drainage ditches for mosquito control.

There is one blog entry about the CCC at the State of Delaware’s blog site and you can view it here. It’s a neat little piece about mosquito control.

Merrill notes that the maximum number of CCC camps to operate in Delaware was 8 and that all but one (the aforementioned Camp S-53-D) were soil conservation and mosquito control camps. Even for its small size, an average of 5,382 Delaware men were given employment because of the CCC.

If we compare Merrill’s camp total against the Annual Reports for fiscal years 1937 and 1939 we find that between July 1936 and June 1937 Delaware had 1 state forest camp, 4 mosquito control camps, 2 agricultural engineering camps and 1 military reservation camp for a total of 8 camps. For the same period between 1938 and 1939 Delaware only had 4 CCC camps, broken out as follows: 1 state forest camp, 1 biological survey camp, and 2 agricultural engineering camps.

Delaware’s overall specific project totals (cited in Merrill’s Forest Army) include:
Trees Planted: 274,000
Channel Cleaning/Flood Control: 12,682,774 square yards
Forest Stand Improvement: 692 acres
Mosquito Control: 52,874 acres

In the state forests of Delaware, CCC enrollees worked at establishing forest boundaries through surveying and marking, construction of truck trails, timber salvage, collection of seedlings, reducing fire hazards and reforestation. A section of forest called the Red Lion Tract was donated to the state of Delaware in 1930, but it wasn’t until the arrival of the CCC that work was begun to reforest the acreage with loblolly pine, shortleaf pine and Scotch pine.

The Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work for fiscal year 1937 lists the monthly totals for enrollment in Delaware as follows:
July 1936: 485
August 1936: 437
September 1936: 336
October 1936: 405
November 1936: 387
December 1936: 369
January 1937: 421
February 1937: 408
March 1937: 319
April 1937: 334
May 1937: 285
June 1937: 254
These monthly totals reflect the number of young men who enrolled in the state of Delaware, not the total number of CCC boys working in the state of Deleware.

If we drill down a bit deeper into the state-by-state numbers in the 1937 Annual Report we’ll find that Delaware gained the following improvements between July of 1936 and June of 1937:
Vehicle bridges: 2
Sewer lines: 1,183 linear feet
Field planting/seeding: 33 acres
Fire hazard reduction (“Road & Trailside”): 6.7 miles
Fire hazard reduction (“Other”): 293.0 Acres
Mosquito control: 7,234 man days

The CCC Legacy maintains a camp listing and the entry for Delaware is reasonably short. The CCC Legacy list shows the following companies operated in Delaware on the dates indicated:
Co. 1224, November 1933 at Lewes, DE, Camp P-51
Co. 1224, April 1936 at Lewes, DE Camp MC-51
Co. 1226, November 1933 at Milford, DE, Camp P-51
Co. 1226, April 1936 at Milford, DE, Camp MC-52
Co. 1293, January 1936 at Georgetown, DE, Camp S-53
Co. 1295, July 1935 at Dover, DE, Camp MC-54
Co. 2213V, July, 1935 at Ft. DuPont, DE, Camp Army-1
Co. 3220, September 1935 at Georgetown, DE, Camp D-2/SCS-2
Co. 3221, October 1935 at Clayton, DE, Camp MC-55
Co. 3222, October 1935 at Wyoming, DE, Camp D-1
Co. 3269C, April 1938 at Dover, DE, Camp BS-1

The camp/company listings at the CCC Legacy website are simply representative and have been taken from the various camp strength listings for dates throughout the lifespan of the CCC.

The February 3, 1940 issue of Happy Days reported the death of a Delaware CCC enrollee from Company 3220, hit by an automobile. The microfilm image is poor; his first name was Dante and his last name looks like Corbyons.

The map image was taken from Stan Cohen's The Tree Army and highlights added to make it easier to read. To read the initial entry in the State-By-State series, click here.

The C.C.C. State-By-State: Connecticut

Before we start, if you’re interested in going back to the initial post in the State-By-State series, click here. You’ll get some notion of the intent of this series and the background on where most of the statistical information is coming from.

Connecticut is a small state and as such the average number of total camps that worked there is small at just 13 according to Merrill in Roosevelt’s Forest Army. In 1937 the total stood at 17 camps, which sorted out thusly: 13 CCC camps were on state forests, 3 CCC camps were on private forests with a single CCC camp assigned to a state park. The existence of these camps meant more than 30,000 Connecticut men received work as a result of the CCC, including some 28,447 junior and veteran enrollees and 2,223 non-enrolled camp personnel.

The 1937 Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work includes a state-by-state monthly breakdown of the numbers of enrollees by state. Connecticut’s enrollment for fiscal year 1937 shaped up like this:
July 1936: 3,842
August 1936: 3,571
September 1936: 2,433
October 1936: 3,122
November 1936: 2,891
December 1936: 2,718
January 1937: 3,090
February 1937: 2,907
March 1937: 1,920
April 1937: 2,378
May 1937: 2,143
June 1937: 1,887
Remember that these monthly totals reflect the number of men who enrolled in the CCC in Connecticut on a monthly basis, not the number of enrollees actually working in Connecticut month-to-month.

For the roughly $20.7 million spent on CCC work in Connecticut, the state gained 123 bridges of all types, 9 new lookout towers and over 1,000 acres of public camping and picnic grounds, among other improvements. Also according to Merrill, every CCC camp in Connecticut was named after a prominent person on either the state or national level.

There’s a very interesting point about the CCC buried in Merrill’s description of work in Connecticut. He notes that the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) law did not make provision for construction of roads, the Forest Service referred to them as “truck trails.” Construction of such “truck trails” would be an important part of CCC work, not just in Connecticut but nationwide.

For a very recent CCC Resource Page post on the CCC at Natchaug, click here. Since that post was made, I’ve found out little about the CCC bridge over the Natchaug River.

Author Marty Podskoch has created a terrific website devoted to the CCC in Connecticut. To see a video of Mr. Podskoch giving a presentation on the CCC in Connecticut, click here.

Perry Merrill’s rundown of CCC work in Connecticut refers to the 1936 dam break above Hartford and the subsequent flooding. Merrill notes that “immediate help by CCC enrollees cleaned out 2,950 buildings and over 800 other structures.”

The 1936 flood was clearly a significant event in Connecticut history and there are ample resources online if you’re interested in more background. Connecticut History Online has a nifty few pages devoted to the flood of 1936 and the Hurricane of 1938. One photo listed with the 1936 flood information is particularly interesting and captivating because the caption purports it to be a photo of National Guardsmen deployed to help with the flood fight. For my money, those look an awful lot like CCC boys. Sadly, the page doesn’t make any reference to the response of the CCC, though there is a reference to the WPA in the section on suggested further reading.

Use the search feature at Connecticut History Online to find two images related to the CCC: an image of Camp Robinson at East Hartford taken in 1935 (who knows, maybe some of those boys helped with flood recovery the next year) and an image of a covered bridge that the CCC helped rebuild. (I’ve cited the copyright data for the photo of the flood response crew used here - above.)

Jump over to Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection website to track down a reference to the exact location of Camp Robinson in the Tunxis State Forest.

Connecticut has a museum dedicated to the CCC and to read a terrific blog post about this gem, click here. By all appearances this is a wonderful museum but sadly, I’m unable to find a website dedicated solely to the museum and its collection.

The book Civilian Conservation Corps: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography by Larry N. Sypolt offers up some tantalizing references to both primary and secondary source documents relating to the CCC nationwide and the entries for Connecticut are no exception. Dedicated and resourceful researchers will want to track down Austin Foster Hawes’ article entitled "The C.C.C. Makes Better Men and Forests in Connecticut," published by the State Forester in 1935. Also of interest: Mary E. Pasco’s article “Connecticut Improves Her Trout Streams: Civilian Conservation Corps Inaugurates Pioneer Work in Developing an Important Recreation Asset, published in the February 1934 issue of American Forests.

Connecticut is the smallest state thus far in our State-By-State rundown of work of the CCC across the United States. In looking at the map and searching for data and pictures, I’m reminded of a disparaging argument often made by revisionist historians regarding the CCC. It’s been argued – though less and less lately – that the CCC benefited the western United States to a greater degree than the eastern United States. I’ve always countered that, since most of the public domain is out west, most of the needed work was naturally in the western U.S. Furthermore, I’ve always pointed out that while more work may have been accomplished in the west (where it was most needed – see previous argument), a lot of the enrollees who performed that work out west came from cities, towns and villages in the eastern United States, consequently the allotments sent home to families didn’t end up in western communities but in eastern cities, towns and villages. You just have to look at a map of Connecticut with the ten CCC campsites highlighted to know that there couldn’t have been enough work to sustain a program like the CCC in Connecticut to the same degree it could be kept busy in Wyoming, Montana or California. One might argue that had it not been for the state forest system in the eastern U.S., the CCC would have accomplished little or no forestry work in this region. (In contrast, the vast tracts of USFS acreage in the west created infinite opportunities for the use of CCC labor.) Perhaps this theme is one we’ll revisit as we explore the work of the CCC in other eastern states.
For those of you keeping track, this is state number 7 in the State-By-State series. We'll look at the Delaware next. If you’d like to view a previous entry in the State-By-State series, I’ve added each new state name as a label so that it will be listed in the sidebar, alphabetically along with other labels used in this blog. As always, I look forward to input and hope you’ll post comments if you have something to share or feedback concerning how you found this blog or how you used the information posted here.

Image credits: As with all the State-by-State posts, the state map was taken from a larger map published in Stan Cohen's Tree Army. I simply highlighted the camp locations to make it easier to read. The photo of the flood fighting crew is from the Connecticut Historical Society and the photo of Camp White is from Cohen's Tree Army, where it is credited as a USFS photo.

The C.C.C. State-By-State: Colorado

The history of the CCC in Colorado has a very personal feeling for me because it was in Colorado that my grandfather worked as a U.S. Forest Service foreman for the CCC at places like Waunita Hot Spring, Norwood, Delta, Gardner, Idaho Springs, San Isabel and Monument. It was an interest in learning more about grandpa’s work that led me to an interest in the larger history of the CCC.

So, when I quote Perry Merrill’s statistics regarding the work of the CCC in Colorado, there is a good degree of pride for me in knowing that grandpa helped stack up some of those numbers for the history books. Merrill notes in Roosevelt’s Forest Army that in June 1937 (for example) there were 38 CCC camps in Colorado divided among the technical services thus: 10 National Park Service camps, 10 Soil Conservation Service camps, 6 National Park Service camps, 5 State Park camps, 4 Division of Grazing camps and 3 Bureau of Reclamation camps. My grandpa was among 5,303 camp officers and supervisory staff to work in CCC camps in Colorado that year. Specific work accomplished in Colorado included 577 impounding and large diversion dams, 2,000 miles of truck trails and minor roads and insect pest control on over 3,000,000 acres.

The Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work for fiscal year 1937 includes a chart of enrollment numbers divided by state of enrollment. The monthly enrollment numbers for Colorado between July 1936 and June 1937 look like this:
July 1936: 3,428
August 1936: 3,078
September 1936: 2,173
October 1936: 3,249
November 1936: 3,115
December 1936: 2,978
January 1937: 3,805
February 1937: 3,609
March 1937: 2,395
April 1937: 3,264
May 1937: 2,994
June 1937: 2,708

Naturally, forestry work figures prominently in the story of the CCC in Colorado, but other significant CCC projects in the Mile High State include work in Colorado National Monument, Mesa Verde National Monument and in Red Rocks Park outside Denver.

For an exploration of the work of the CCC in Colorado National Monument, visit their online Administrative History – specifically Chapter 4. The December 30, 1933 edition of Happy Days reported on the work of CCC enrollees to help in the recovery of 9 Civil Works Administration workers who were killed in a landslide at Colorado National Monument on December 12th. You’ll find a detailed account of the event in the 2008 book With Picks, Shovels and Hope: The CCC and its Legacy on the Colorado Plateau by Wayne K. Hinton and Elizabeth A. Green. Though no CCC enrollees were injured in this tragedy, it is chilling to know that only two days earlier, CCC enrollees had been pulled off that particular part of the project because they lacked the masks required to protect them from the rock dust.

For a previous CCC Resource Blog post regarding the book New Deal Days: The CCC At Mesa Verde, click here. The work of CCC enrollees at Mesa Verde ran the gamut from tough labor constructing park infrastructure to delicate work constructing dioramas for the museum exhibits.

The CCC Legacy held their annual reunion at Denver's Red Rocks Park in 2009. Much of the original camp remains, in part because it was quickly occupied by the military shortly after its stint as a CCC camp was complete. There is an impressive exhibit in the amphitheatre visitor center that includes terrific photos of the work done by enrollees from camp SP-13-C. The main exhibit panel reads in part:

Red Rocks Amphitheatre was the Civilian Conservation Corps’ largest and most ambitious project. A crew of about 300 young men at any one time lived in barracks near Morrison and worked on the theatre from 1936 to 1941, with help from the National Parks Service and Works Progress Administration. They laid 10 boxcar loads of cement and put down 90,000 square feet of flagstone quarried at Lyons, Colorado. The physical structure of the facility, as well as all the finished terracing and stonework, was built by hand, without the help of any machines.

On a personal level, I’ve explored more of the history of the CCC in Colorado than perhaps any other state with the possible exception of Arizona. Most of what I have learned has come as a result of searching for information on the camps where my grandfather, William “Bill” Rutherford worked as a U.S. Forest Service foreman. Along the way, I learned a lot of other stuff about what the CCC did in Colorado.

There is perhaps no greater primary source document on the CCC in Colorado than the book History of Civilian Conservation Corps in Colorado, Summer 1936, which is basically a District Annual or yearbook that gives details on all the CCC camps working in what were then called the Littleton District and the Grand Junction District. And while the book is a treasure to folks looking for details on CCC companies in Colorado, it’s also a boon for anyone looking for histories of CCC companies that were formed in or worked in the 8th Corps Area because it contains a list of individual company histories, giving their mobilization date and location and the places they worked. (Admittedly, there are discrepancies in some individual histories when they are compared to information gathered through detailed research, but if you’re seeking information on a company that worked in Colorado, you can’t do any better than starting here. I’ll post scans of those pages here at the bottom of this post for your reference.)

I’ll close this entry in the State-By-State series by sharing the text of a memorandum that was posted at the Red Rocks CCC camp outside Denver in 1937. In welcoming new and visiting enrollees, I don’t think Lieutenant Neely could have done any better in his choice of encouraging words; they’re a decent set of guidelines even today.

August 2, 1937
Company Memorandum:
For the information of all New Enrollees and Enrollees on detached service with this company, the following is issued for your guidance.
You are welcome.
1. The camp policy is, “A square deal to all.”
2. We have but few rules – observe them.
3. Your problem is our problem.
4. This is your camp; be proud of it.
5. Cooperation and getting along is our Motto.
6. Your health and comfort are our chief concern.
7. Recreation is considered necessary.
8. Your privacy and rights are respected.
9. Respect the privacy and rights of all hands.
10. Help us maintain clean Barracks, clean Grounds and a smart appearance.
11. The Camp Commander always has time for your “Problem”.

Signed: H.W. Neely, 1st Lt. USNR, Commanding

+ + +

Some 75 years later I believe Lieutenant Neely's philosophy lived in the form of many enrollees, camp staff, overhead and military officers and their daily dealings with their fellowmen and I'm proud to let the record show that my grandfather William Rutherford was one of them

(above) Foreman Bill Rutherford with his crew, Norwood, Colorado. (below) the CCC camp at Idaho Springs, Colorado.

(below)Individual Company histories from the 1936 Colorado District Annual:

(Sources: The Colorado state map is taken from Cohen's Tree Army. Images from Colorado National Monument and Mesa Verde are from the book With Picks, Shovels and Hope. The contemporary image of the camp at Morrison, Colorado and the text of Lt. Neely's letter are from the Red Rocks visitor center exhibit. The company histories were taken from the 1936 District Annual. The image of the Idaho Springs CCC camp is from the Colorado State Archives, item number 30255 FF-6.)

The C.C.C. State-By-State: California

California, state number five in our state-by-state tour of the CCC, is another state that garnered a good deal of space in Perry Merrill’s book Roosevelt’s Forest Army, originally published in 1981. California had a lot of CCC camps. Merrill reports that in 1937 for example, there were 101 camps in California, divided as follows between the various technical services: 50 National Forest camps, 15 State Park camps, 11 National Park camps, 10 Private Forest camps, 9 Soil Conservation Service camps, 3 Division of Grazing camps, 1 Bureau of Reclamation camp and 1 Military Reservation camp.
In nearly a decade of work, the CCC accounted for some $25.6 million in allotments to dependents and for that money, enrollees built 306 lookout towers and houses, strung 8,704 miles of telephone wire, built over a million miles of truck trails and minor roads and performed tree and plant disease control on nearly 800,000 acres of land, among countless other projects. (Again, these figures are cited in detail in Merrill’s Roosevelt’s Forest Army.)

The 1937 Annual Report of the Director of Emergency Conservation Work reported the monthly enrollment numbers for California for fiscal year 1937 as follows:

July 1936: 10,150
August 1936: 9,048
September 1936: 7,961
October 1936: 8, 565
November 1936: 7,966
December 1936: 7,474
January 1937: 8,759
February 1937: 8,225
March 1937: 6,118
April 1937: 7,826
May 1937: 6,951
June 1937: 6,086

These figures represent the monthly enrollment totals for California, not the total number of enrollees working in California.

California is located in U.S. Forest Service Region 9 and the Forest Service’s history of the Civilian Conservation Corps includes an entire section devoted to work in California, which you can access here.

Reportedly, the largest single undertaking by the CCC in California is the Ponderosa Way, an 800-mile long firebreak and truck trail cut through the Stanislas National Forest. The Forest Service history includes reference to this massive project:

The project, first proposed by the regional forester in 1929, was made possible only by the extra labor provided by the CCC. On July 21, 1933, Show told national forest supervisors in the proposed Ponderosa Way areas about his plan to construct “a real fire line with a truck trail along it down the length of the Sierra and the north Coast Range located near the lower edge of the present timber lands.

In 2009 the Forest Service sponsored a Passport in Time project that put volunteers in the Ponderosa Way region with metal detectors to see what sorts of artifacts they could unearth. The results of the survey and recovery of artifacts might be characterized as a mixed bag. A brief write up by a USFS archaeologist, Stacy Lundgren states in part: “While some of the artifacts had little to do with the Ponderosa way and more to do with 1950s-era household trash, enough items were located to tell us we were on the right track. Historic maps and aerial photographs provided the clues to where to look and our volunteers provided the enthusiasm and dedication in the looking itself. This project was just the beginning in the planned documentation and interpretation of this significant resource.”

The history of fire suppression by the CCC is certainly nothing new and California had its share of fires to be fought, both forest fires and structure fires. I’m blessed in that I have corresponded with lots of former CCC enrollees over the years and one gentleman who’s been a font of information pertaining to CCC camps throughout California is Gordon Anderson. Gordie wrote to me some time back regarding a particular fire that occurred while he was assigned to the CCC camp at Big Basin, California. Here it is in his words:
While I was stationed in Big Basin, I was attached to the Forestry Fire Station in Felton, California just down the road – car fires, structure fires, and one forest fire – the Mountain Charlie Gulch Fire. That one was arson, started by an old guy riding a mule up the canyon and throwing lighted newspaper into the brush as he rode. He was spotted by a forestry plane, so when he rode out at the head end of the canyon, we were waiting for him. We took him back to the fire camp, gave him a drink, food, and a shovel and put him to work on the line – no rest, no relief. After two straight shifts of being booted onto his feet whenever he sat down, and full exposure to the fun of fighting fire, we turned him over to the sheriff, who wasn’t much more friendly than we were!

Gordie also recounted many humorous incidents that occurred during his time in the CCC in California. One incident involved an effort to establish a new pit latrine for the camp. Gordie wrote:
Dynamite figured in several of our little adventures – we used a lot of it. One of the messier ones: Our old privy had been there for several years and was plenty full, so the camp crew dug a new one just up the hill from the old one. The soil in those hills isn’t very absorbent, so the foreman handed a couple of the new boys a case of 40% and told them to load and shoot the hole to open it up for drainage, so they did and used the entire case! Unfortunately, they didn’t listen too closely to what he said and they loaded the wrong hole – the old one! When that blast when off it spread a thick layer of crap over the whole camp and believe me, it didn’t smell like no rose garden either! It still had a fairly strong perfume when we transferred out of there to Empire Meadows in Yosemite, several months later.

Gordie also commented on the impact the CCC experience had on him personally: I am sure that the experience in the CCC helped me a lot in later years; taught me how to obey orders (even if I thought they were stupid) and surely helped me to learn from my experiences. For instance, I learned not to sleep under a truck. On the Red Hill Fire, we were relieved, fed and I grabbed a blanket to get some rest. I flaked out under a truck and corked off and when I awoke, the truck was gone – never heard a thing. Fortunately, the Lord was with me that time. My brain certainly wasn’t!

The website of the Conference of California Historical Societies includes a brief nod to the work of the CCC.

There’s a very nice series of web pages devoted to the work of the CCC in California, over at the California State Parks website. The site has multiple components and links to photos, brochures and other items of interest. There is also a list of featured state parks that includes La Purisima Mission, Big Basin Redwoods and Mount Diablo.

The true total number of enrollees killed while in the CCC may never be known. The CCC newspaper Happy Days reported some of the fatalities, but certainly not all of them. A current ongoing project of mine has been to gather data on CCC fatalities so I’ll close with a tidbit or two regarding CCC fatalities in California. One of the first CCC fatalities in California, as reported in Happy Days, was that of Cecil Loomis who was evidently killed when a CCC truck collided with an automobile. Cecil’s death was reported in the February 3rd edition of Happy Days. And it was just a couple months later that an enrollee by the name of Jones was crushed when the cement mixer he was helping move slipped off the truck, crushing young Jones to death

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

As with all the posts in the State-By-State series the camp location map was taken from Cohen's Tree Army and the camp locations highlighted. All photos are from the USFS and appear in Cohen's Tree Army except the image of the snow covered CCC camp, which is an image of the Big Basin CCC camp provided by Gordie Anderson.