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By the time the ccc was founded in 1933,Americans were beginning to recognize the need to care for natural resources.This concept was not new. As early as the 1820s, writers, artists, and intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry DavidThoreau, George Catlin, and James Fenimore Cooper proposed saving natural resources for the sake of beauty alone. In 1864, George Perkins Marsh helped turn the focus in a different direction with his book Man and Nature.Marsh started a new movement to preserve remaining resources. He advocated using modern techniques to manage natural resources so they could be enjoyed by the public and so that they might also create some economic benefit. Under the leadership of PresidentTheodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s, Americans learned of what was, for the first time, being called conservation. Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt’s chief forester and a progressive who believed in Marsh’s idea of scientifically managing resources, was among the first to use the term conservation in discussions of natural resources. Pinchot served as the main architect of government-led conservation during Roosevelt’s administration. He oversaw the establishment of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 and popularized the idea that effective forest management should provide “the greatest good for the greatest number.” In other words, natural resources such as forests should be efficiently managed and used in ways that benefited all people.1 While Pinchot was introducing conservation ideas in forestry, John Muir was gaining national attention for his writings on the need to preserve open space for the public good. In particular, Muir championed the creation of a system of national parks. Yellowstone, the first national park, was established in 1872, with Sequoia andYosemite following in 1890, but many more parks took shape in the early 1900s with the rise of the conservation movement . These national parks had a dual mission of conserving open spaces and landscapes while providing for enjoyment and attracting visitors. Muir’s more idealistic preservationist views conflicted with Pinchot’s more practical utilitarian beliefs, but both worked to conserve and protect the country’s natural resources.2 Conservation ideals were applied in forestry and in the creation of national parks early in the 1900s, but interest in soil conservation followed more slowly. Dr. Hugh Hammond Bennett, a former chemist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, had been speaking out for decades about the causes and types of soil erosion and the need for scientific soil management. His work attracted little attention until the country moved closer to the Dust 77 INTRODUCTION: MINNESOTA’S CONSERVATION FOUNDATIONS Bowl era.With Bennett’s 1928 bulletin, Soil Erosion: A National Menace, people finally started to listen.3 In a dramatic move as conditions continued to worsen, Bennett managed to delay important testimony before Congress in 1935 until a major dust cloud reached the capitol. As the dust cloud settled over Washington, DC, Bennett gestured out the windows and declared,“This, gentlemen, is what I am talking about”—and convinced the lawmakers of the need for a permanent government agency to address soil erosion and related issues. With this, the Soil Conservation Service (scs) was established in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bennett developed several soil erosion experiment stations around the country,including one at La Crosse,Wisconsin,which would help provide leadership for Minnesota’s ccc soil conservation work.4 Before the scs was established, the Soil Erosion Service (ses) was formed as a temporary agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Organized on August 24, 1933, it oversaw early ccc conservation work. In Minnesota, this coordination began when regional director R. H. Davis transferred Herbert Flueck, Minnesota’s first soil conservationist and first ses soil conservation work program administrator, to SpringValley, Minnesota, in 1934. In 1937, as the permanent usda soil conservation program continued to grow, the Minnesota soil conservation coordinator’s office opened in St.Paul with Flueck as acting state coordinator.The next year, Minnesota ccc project management was consolidated under the Faribault project office, where it remained through 1942. The Department of Conservation Division of Drainage and Waters approved all soil conservation projects.5 The conservation ideals of Pinchot, Muir, Bennett, and others guided much of the work of the ccc. In Minnesota, others helped to shape and promote conservation of natural resources. During Minnesota’s early years, as throughout the country, people showed little interest in conservation. Legislators established Minnesota’s first state...

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