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Conservation Corps helped America survive the Great Depression

The Civilian Conservation Corps lasted only nine years, from 1933 to 1943, but its accomplishments are still seen today.

Conservation crews built fire trails, recreational trails, lookout towers, dams and telephone lines.

They built lodges and campsites in state and national parks. They fought floods, forest fires and soil erosion. They improved fish and wildlife habitat. From quarries, they hauled rock for buildings and limestone for farm fields.

The CCC planted an estimated 3 billion trees. This was especially crucial in the Dust Bowl states. New trees slowed down the wind, held water in the soil and held the soil in place. Nearly 165,000 men were assigned to 128 CCC camps throughout Wisconsin. We can thank them for the rustic shelters, winding trails and stone steps at our state parks.

Crews made improvements on eight state parks: Devil’s Lake, Copper Falls, Interstate, Peninsula, Perrot, Rib Mountain, Wyalusing and the UW Arboretum.

Crews were also stationed in the farmlands and forests of Wisconsin.

Enlistment was for six months, but workers could re-enlist for additional stints. Clothing, lodging and meals were provided. Workers were paid $30 a month and were required to send $25 of that to their families back home. The $5 the workers spent in communities near their worksites stimulated local economies.

Each military-style CCC camp was staffed by Army personnel, with barracks, a mess hall, commissary and a bugle sounding reveille in the morning.

World War II hastened the end of the CCC. Young men enlisted in the military or found better pay in private-sector jobs. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the nation’s attention, and resources, focused on the war.

Today, visitors to the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum in Rhinelander can view photographs, personal memorabilia, uniforms, work tools, emblems, jewelry, papers and a replica of a barrack.

The Nature Center at Devil’s Lake State Park near Baraboo contains memorabilia from when the CCC camp operated there.

America was in the grips of the Great Depression when Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps. One-fourth of the population was unemployed. Families struggled to put food on tables. They feared for their future.

FDR’s New Deal created a measure of economic security for Americans. Some of the initiatives were temporary, such as the CCC. Others continue today, such as Social Security for retirees.

The New Deal initiatives were not handouts; rather, they put people to work doing jobs that to this day enhance the quality of life for our citizens.

One Wisconsin CCC worker said years later, “I joined up as a boy and came out feeling like a man with a new sense of self-respect, dignity and assurance that there would be a future for everyone in America.”

Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, represents most of Rock County and the Whitewater area in the Wisconsin Senate. She can be reached by e-mail at Sen.Robson@legis.state.wi.us, by phone at 1-800-334-1468, or by mail at P.O. Box 7882, Madison, WI 53707-7882.