In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the many New Deal programs created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression. Signed into law early in , it became one of Roosevelt’s first New Deal initiatives, and it operated until . This peacetime “tree army” was one of the new president’s most popular programs because it was developed to enhance both natural and human resources. Certainly, it was one of the most idealistic. In proposing this agency, Roosevelt noted the vital natural resources efforts to be undertaken, but also emphasized the more important moral and spiritual value of such work to the multitude of jobless young men—really boys, as they were called then—who would enroll. The program proved to be a boon for Peninsula State Park and all of Door County. Noting the serious local and national economic situation and the dire unemployment situation, the News commented, “Unless something is done . . . the winter of – will be the worst in the history of the country.” It added, “The state of Wisconsin faces an especially trying situation. Practically every taxing unit in the state is without funds with which to carry on its normal governmental activity, because of the enormous amount of tax delinquencies, to say nothing about providing relief for unemployed.”1 Once established, the CCC program provided employment and training for over three million young men.2 In its early years, enrollment was limited to those selected from local relief rolls who were between seventeen and twentythree years of age. Their involvement was also a great help to their families since most of their monthly pay was sent directly home.3 CCC camps were placed in the heart of wilderness areas, parks, and at the edge of small towns. There, groups of about two hundred young men lived in neat rows of military barracks-like dwellings. Each camp was, essentially, a            amp eninsular and the  municipality in itself and was self-supporting in subsistence and administration . In April , during the height of the Great Depression, enrollment started for thousands of unemployed young men from families on relief. By July, the full quota of three hundred thousand men had been selected and the initial enrollment task was completed. They were distributed among fifteen hundred camps.4 Before the year ended, forty U.S. Forest Service CCC camps had been established in Wisconsin.5 By the end of the summer of , there were CCC camps in  national parks and  state parks in forty states.6 Eventually, thousands of these installations were located in every state and territorial possession. While every state had at least one project undertaken by the CCC, Wisconsin had many. Ninety-one CCC camps operated in Wisconsin, employing about fourteen thousand enrollees per year.7 Most of the camps were established in Wisconsin ’s state forests, but a few of them were in state parks. In addition to the one at Peninsula State Park—Camp Peninsular—there were camps at Devils Lake, Copper Falls, Interstate, Perrot, Rib Mountain, and Wyalusing, as well as the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Arboretum. In all, about , Wisconsin young men took part in this noble environmental and social effort.8 To administer the program and, where essential, cooperate with the many state and local governments, four “districts” were created that divided the country geographically. At first Wisconsin’s district headquarters was in Indianapolis , but beginning in April , , after CCC administration was decentralized, all of Wisconsin north of a line running east and west through Baraboo, which included Door County, was organized into the Sparta CCC District. That fall the district’s headquarters, originally at Camp McCoy, was moved to American Suppliers Incorporated, in Sparta.9 At the parks, the CCC boys cut trails and roads, hauled massive stones for paths and staircases, cleared brush and stumps, and built bridges and shelters still in use today. Erosion controls were put in place and bluffs were stabilized, usually without the help of mechanical equipment. An inspector compared the building of steep trails at Perrot State Park to the “labors of the ancient Egyptians in the building of the pyramids.”10 Other crews worked on city parks such as Whitnall, Sheridan, Estabrook, and Klezsch in Milwaukee. It has been said that the Civilian Conservation Corps advanced the nation’s state park movement by a half-century.11 Their work was a classic example of how buildings and landscapes designed with a “sense of place” can reflect the...

Share