CIVILLIAN CONSERVATION CORPS

Civilian Conservation Corps Website

Project completed by Holly Trapp, Emily Parry and Sarah White

FALL 2002

With the many National Parks, State Parks, campgrounds, lakes and hiking trails Southern Utah is a prime destination for tourists from around the world.  However, many people don’t realize that without the efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corps. (C.C.C.), a New Deal program established by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the great depression, many of the recreation sites in Southern Utah wouldn’t have been built.  Residents of Southern Utah owe much of their recreational development to the C.C.C.  Some of them include:

     -    Coal Creek Dam

     -    Cedar Canyon Camp Ground

     -    Duck Creek Camp Ground

     -    Navajo Lake Dam

     -    HWY 12 up Parowan Canyon

     -    Hells Backbone Bridge (near Escalante)

     -    Many of the Zion Park trails

-    Many irrigation ditches and culverts throughout Southern Utah including Cedar Mountain and even Hurricane

     Our website was created to benefit not only Southern Utah natives seeking more information about the C.C.C., but will also serve as a “travel guide” for visitors to the area who want to take a virtual historic tour of Cedar City and surrounding areas.

     As we researched and developed our project we spoke with Dixie National Forest archeologist Miriam “Omar” Jacqulin.  She has done extensive research concerning C.C.C. activity in the Forest.  She was a rich source of information and was able to give us leads on other people and places to visit to further our research.

     The internet was also an invaluable tool during our research process.  We visited many sites including the Southern Utah University Special Collections which has an extensive gallery of C.C.C. era photos. 

     Although our project has no connections to past service learning projects it opens the door to many ours of future service learning work.  The Dixie National Forest is continually doing archeological and archival work on the C.C.C.  The B.L.M. has programs as well as other city, county and state organizations.  Future students may wish to work hand in hand with some of the agencies.  It may also be fun to create a pamphlet or “passport” detailing directions to and explanations of different sites that tourists and locals may want to visit.  There is so much possibility and potential to C.C.C. related projects that we simple didn’t have time to explore.

     As we visited with Ms. Jaqculin at the forest service she expressed her concern that as people discover and research historical sites around Southern Utah it is important to remember that many of them have not yet been explored and secured enough for public visitors.  For the sake of the future of these sites she asked that people use caution and common sense while exploring.

     Our time table for this project was pretty high. We spent as many as 12-15 hours trying to get the “right” pictures of some of the locations of the projects. Due to early snowfall in the Canyons we finally resorted to looking in the Special Collections of the Gerald Sherratt Library. We found some really great pictures, some that were dated back quite a ways to when the projects were in progress.

We then spent about 5 hours each researching about the different projects. The paper itself was the easiest part however because all we had to do was compile the information and that took approximately 5 hours of continuous typing and revision. The final step of our project the Website was also the most difficult. We had to design it add pictures, links, and information to it. The website took about 6 hours of toying with it to make it correct.

     The technology used on the project was telephones, computers, digital and film cameras, a scanner, and cars. We had to call many people to try and find out more about the CCC. Then we used the computer to help search for information, find pictures, scan pictures, build a website, and type our paper. We used both a digital and film camera to take many pictures unsuccessfully. The cars are what got us to these wonderful CCC sites.

Background

     The Civilian Conservation Corps was formed in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the great depression. The CCC was one of many organizations established under the "New Deal" to provide work for those Americans who were in need of jobs. The CCC was designed to solve two problems facing the United States at the time: provide financial relief and create conservation projects throughout the country.

The state of Utah was greatly influenced by the work of the CCC and had over 116 camps in 27 of the 29 counties in Utah. The

Camps were supervised by various government agencies including the United States Forest Service which supervised 47 camps; the

Bureau of Land Management had 24 camps building reservoirs and working on erosion control projects. The Bureau of Reclamation

had 6 camps working on irrigation ditches and canals including the Midview Dam and one of the biggest projects in the state, the Moon River Project canals in the Uinta Basin. The National Park Service had seven camps, based mainly in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks which worked on campgrounds, blazed trails and improved park paths and facilities. The Soil Conservation Service had its eight camps working on range receding. Many other camps also existed and worked under the U.S. Biological Survey, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the U.S. Army.

The state of Utah was treated very well by the CCC due in part by the amplitude of projects that could be worked on and also due to the manpower and support provided by Utahans. There were 16,872 junior enrollees from Utah, 746 Indian enrollees and 4,456 supervisors. Over all, there were 22,074 Utah men who worked for the CCC during the nine-year period, an additional 23,833 men from out of the state also worked on projects in Utah.

The CCC also worked hard in many emergency situations over the years. The young men all attended fire fighting school their first week in camp and would use there training many times. The early 1930s was a time of severe drought in Utah, and in 1934 the worst in terms of fire fighting hours logged by the CCC-nearly twelve thousand man-days, more than one fourth the total fire time for the full nine years. The year 1936 featured another seriously dry summer, and the CCC crew near Milford spent ten days on the three-thousand-acre Wah Wah Mountain fire, one of the largest fires ever fought in Utah.

The next winter of 1936-37 Utah experienced one of her worst winter seasons yet. CCC crews from the Division of Grazing camp worked in Vernal around the clock for several days in early January 1937 in temperatures of thirty and forty degrees below zero clearing roads for school buses and for mail and coal deliveries, hauling feed on sleds for thirty-five miles to save starving sheep, and rescuing a sick and bedfast family who had not had a fire for thirty-six hours. In southern Utah, local stockmen requested help from a CCC camp in St. George to try to get feed to herds of cattle and sheep, as well as to people. In eight days of continuous travel, the relief caravan of eight CCC and four private trucks led by an R-5 caterpillar tractor battled snowdrifts for fifty-two miles to Little Tank in the Arizona Strip with twelve tons of cottonseed cake and grain. The situation was grim all across southern Utah.

The CCC also created good public relations by volunteering in community work in addition to there work projects. Some of these projects were the St. George city park, installing 5,000 feet of pipe in a new sprinkling system in Aspen Grove, and opening a Forest Service Camp near Manila, which provided the only doctor, newspaper and telephone line in the area.

The presence of the CCC brought financial benefits to the state, in addition to the numerous fences built, phone lines installed, bridges constructed, fires put out, land reseeded, replanted or reterraced. Camp workers received thirty dollars a month and, twenty-five of which was sent home to there families, five of which they were allowed to spend on themselves. More than $125,000 a month was sent through Utah's economy from the wages of Utah enrollees and personal. Utah businesses benefited from contracts for equipment, food and lumber. It is estimated by the Federal Security Agency that the CCC had spent over $52,756,183.00 in the state of Utah by the time that the program ended in 1942 and that Utah ranked seventh in the nation as to the funds spent by the CCC in each state.

The CCC ended in 1942 as World War II broke out and the great depression ended. Most of the CCC enrollees joined the military

and fought in the war. There service to the State of Utah was recognized by the Salt Lake Tribune in an editorial on July 3, 1942 in which it was said, "More than all else it aided youth to get a new grip on destiny and obtain a saner outlook on the needs of the nation... The CCC may be dead but the whole country is covered with lasting monuments to its timely service."

Kenneth W. Baldridge.http://historytogo.utah.gov/cccorps.html

Holly Reflections

      I really enjoyed the project. Not only did I learn a lot about the projects done by the Civilian Conservation Corps in Southern Utah, but I learned a lot about the projects they did elsewhere. I never knew that the CCC served the public in so many ways. To see some of the wonderful tasks they completed and imagine the hardships they would have had to endure to complete these tasks is amazing to me.

     I have great respect for the men who designed the CCC, but even greater for the ones who participated in it. The CCC played such an important role in the Nation’s history for helping Americans withstand the depression and also helping the young men make a living to support their families through the Depression. Programs like this are what gave the Nation help.

     One thing that I really liked about our project is that we did set up a website just for Southern Utah CCC projects. When I worked on my last Service Learning Project, I needed to find out about a project done in Southern Utah by the CCC. I could find very minimal information on it and I think that it’s a real benefit to our community as well as the general public in the United States to know and see what the CCC has done for our area.

Sarah Reflections

     I think the biggest thing I gained from this project was an understanding of how much the CCC really did down in Southern Utah.  Previously I had only known of about 5 projects in and around Cedar City, now I know there are probably hundreds!!  We wanted to get more information about what the boys actually did at each site, but there wasn’t a whole lot of that to be found.  Everything just said, “They worked here”, “They slept here”.  There weren’t a whole lot of details.

     My dad works for the forest service and he took me up the mountain and showed me the CCC camp up by Duck Creek.  They are still doing research and archeological stuff at the site, so it isn’t marked, or publicized, but it was really interesting.  There were parts of foundations and cement slabs from several structures.  For me it put everything on a more personal note.  It helped me connect people to all of the things I had been researching.  My grandpa actually worked for the CCC down on the Arizona strip.  That is the next place I would like to explore!!

Emily Reflections

     Our project was very interesting to do. I think the greatest benefit I received from doing a project on the CCC was learning about the community and the state that I live in. I think that people are amazed when they discover the history that surrounds them. I was surprised at how much one organization that was established during one of the most trying times in our country's history had such a huge effect on the landscape in which I live. Little did I realize how hard those men and women in the Civilian Conservation Corps work.   

I think that I developed a greater appreciation for the work that the CCC did while traveling to the sites and projects that they worked on. I also was surprised to learn of the impact that the reseeding and replanting projects had on my family members who lived throughout Utah as farmers.     

I feel that this project will also help others to recognize an organization that had a great impact on the lives of millions of Americans. I also believe that those people who visit CCC projects or who have benefited from them are grateful to the hard working men and women of the CCC.