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91 Happily Ever After on the Blue: Eugene Gaddy Eugene Gaddy was a young man of twenty when he joined the CCC in April 1938. His adventure began when he met the other Texas rookies at Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio. They boarded a train and headed west. The last stop on the line was Silver City, New Mexico. There to greet them were army officers who divided them up (almost at random, it seemed) and assigned them to the several camps in the area. Gene was told he would be serving with Company 842 at camp f-03-a. Those numbers didn’t mean much to Gene and the other Texans at the time, of course, but he soon found out that he was now part of one of the longest-serving CCC companies on the Apache National Forest. TheBluecamp(f-03-a)hadbeenupandrunningsinceJune1933,and its wood-frame buildings were as permanent looking as facilities ever were in the CCC. The camp was considered to be winter quarters even though it was at an elevation of about fifty-eight hundred feet. Those living in the Blue River country could expect cold and a fair amount of snowfall, and Mother Nature did not disappoint. Still, the weather never held up work projects for very long. By the time Gene got there the company had already completed a number of major campground and road projects up and down the Blue River. Gene began his tour at Blue as a carpenter, but he advanced quickly, and by the end of his first enlistment period he had moved on to supervisory duties. The CCC enlistment limit was one year, but Gene liked the life. After he had served the CCC maximum, Gene was hired as a project assistant and thus saw three years of service at Blue camp. The company’s routine was well established long before Gene arrived. Chapter 6 92 j the ccc in arizona’s rim country It was standard procedure that during the summer months the company would move higher into the White Mountains to a place called Buffalo Crossing. Although Buffalo Crossing was officially listed as a main camp (f-54-a), not a side or temporary location, at its elevation of almost seventy -five hundred feet it was strictly a summer camp. There were a few frame buildings, but the men slept in big, round tents, six men to a unit. At the end of the summer the tents were taken down and stored, and the men moved back to the Blue camp. Company 842 returned to Buffalo Crossing every summer. Gene recalled: A local rancher was hired to look after the vacated camps (both at Blue and Buffalo Crossing) after the men had left for the season , but you didn’t need to worry much about Buffalo Crossing. Being high up in the mountains, even if you could get there, you would be up to your eyeballs in snow. (Gaddy interview, 10 October 1999) During the Monday-through-Friday work week, the CCC boys were most often under the jurisdiction of U.S. Forest Service employees, who took them to the job sites and told them what needed to be done. The boys also received special training from the rangers. Instructions on firefighting came in handy. “We must have fought a million forest fires. At least it seemed like it,” remembered Gene. Every man in camp knew how to use basic firefighting tools. The work assigned to the men was similar to that done in other CCC camps.BuildingbridgesovertheBlueRiver,installingculverts,andmaking campground improvements were common work orders. Sometimes thejobstookthemfarfromthemaincamp.AfterGenebecameasergeant in the company he had to send a four-man detail more than twenty miles away to Greer, high in the White Mountains, to help with campground cleanup. Gene also remembered the remote side camp at KP Cienega in the rugged mountains southwest of camp, high above the Blue River in the pines along the twisting Coronado Trail (State Highway 191). The CCC crew constructed tables and toilet buildings at the campground. While improvements have been made since the 1930s, the campground is still there, compliments of the boys from Company 842. Forest Service officials had the men during the work week, but the camp’s army officers often put them to work on Saturdays till noon. The most common tasks were gathering firewood for the coming week and general camp cleanup. After that, the men had the rest of the weekend [3.143.4...

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