Hard Work and a Good Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota

7: Building Up Parks

99 S tate and federal forests weren’t the only public lands to benefit from ccc labor. Many enrollees also worked in Minnesota’s state parks. Minnesota was one of the first states in the country to develop a park system , with the first state memorial site established at Camp Release near Montevideo in 1889. Itasca State Park, located at the headwaters of the Mississippi River, was established just two years later. By 1925,the number of state parks had grown,but their management was uneven. Although in theory the Department of Forestry, the Game and Fish Commission, and the state auditor each administered some of the parks, in reality local advisory committees provided daily management.This situation began to change in 1925 when the Department of Conservation gained jurisdiction over state parks. It changed again in 1931 when the Department of Conservation was reorganized.With that reorganization,supervision of Minnesota ’s parks was consolidated under the Division of Forestry,led by Grover Conzet.1 When the ccc began its work, the National Park Service (nps), under the U.S. Department of the Interior, oversaw work projects in state parks. Responding to the need for better in-state coordination, the park service appointed HaroldW. Lathrop supervisor of ccc state park work in Minnesota in 1934 with a salary paid from federal funds.Almost immediately, state leg7 : BUILDING UP PARKS islators began examining overall state park management and administrative needs.Their goal was to put state parks under the direction of someone just as highly trained in park management as the director of the state’s Division of Forestry was in forest management. In 1935, the Minnesota legislature created the Division of State Parks within the Department of Conservation and appointed Lathrop as the first director of the system, which had by this time grown to thirty sites.Through the new office, Lathrop coordinated ccc work conserving existing parks and developing new ones, following nps guidelines. The agency had several decades of development and management experience—based on the beliefs of John Muir—preserving and maintaining natural areas while making them available for public use.nps personnel were in a position to make this knowledge available nationwide through the ccc.2 Work on Minnesota’s state park system began quickly. On April 29, 1933, even before Lathrop’s appointment, nps officials contacted Minnesota conservation department personnel and asked them to begin work on architectural and landscape designs for the state’s parks. At the Minnesota Central Design Office on the fifth floor of the Post Office and Federal Courts Building in St. Paul (now the Landmark Center), chief architect and Duluth native EdwardW.Barber,architectV .C.Martin,landscape architect N.H.Averill,and engineer Oscar Newstrom began this task. In all, “about a dozen” architects and landscape architects, working with nps regional office personnel, developed plans for Minnesota parks.They created design concepts, master plans, and site plans that emphasized an “appropriate relationship between the built environment and the natural landscape.”3 Any plans developed at the Minnesota office in St. Paul had to first be approved by the nps before ccc enrollees could start work.ConradWirth,son of Minneapolis park developerTheodoreWirth,was named by the nps to oversee state park ccc work throughout the country. Developing a system of regional offices and inspectors,Wirth ensured that architects,landscape architects , park specialists,and engineers adhered to nps guidelines and standards. Regional inspectors carried out these directives. In the camps, superintendents made sure projects were done according to the architect’s plans.Bernard Penner, an lem at the Gooseberry Falls State Park camp, remembered,“[The architect] and the engineer were in charge.”Each superintendent was allowed up to ten foremen, at least two of whom had to have training in landscape architecture, to provide technical support. lems offered specialized guidance and training to enrollees, frequently while serving as crew foremen.4 ccc enrollees often arrived with little or no training or expertise, but they learned quickly on the job. Raymond Noyes noted, “[M]any of them were working for the first time in their lives.They had to learn the skills.” Edward Schubert remembered,“It was strictly hands-on experience and learning.”5 By June 1933, enrollees in Minnesota’s first state park camps, following designs approved by the nps regional office, began work in Scenic State Park 100 the work of the ccc [18.188.108.54] Project MUSE (2024-04-19...