Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) 75th Anniversary

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established on March 19, 1933, by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a New Deal program to aid young men from unemployed families during the Great Depression. Executive Order 6106 took effect in April 1933, ten days after President Roosevelt’s address to Congress. The organization established was technically called “Emergency Conservation Work.” The phrase Roosevelt used in his speech to Congress, however, the Civilian Conservation Corps, was more frequently used and is the name by which the organization is referred to today.

Skyline Drive, Virginia

View from Skyline Drive Photo by The Clay Taurus via flickr used through creative commons license

Skyline Drive is the only public road that travels the length of the National Park Service's Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, measuring 105 miles of roadway. The drive runs the entire length of the northern and southern crests of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Program, Skyline Drive is a testament to the expanding movement for conservation, public outdoor recreation, and regional planning that gained momentum in the 1920s and became the hallmark of Federal policy in the 1930s.

Publications

Several titles in the National Register of Historic Places bulletin series provide guidance on the identification, evaluation and documentation of a variety of historic landscapes--from parks and parkways to gardens and cemeteries to agricultural districts and institutional campuses--for listing in the National Register.

Historic Residential Suburbs
Designed Historic Landscapes
Rural Historic Landscapes
Historic Battlefields
Historic Cemeteries
Traditional Cultural Properties

Discover Historic Contexts featuring aspects of Landscape Architecture and History such as Historic Park Landscapes in National and State Parks MPS , Modernism in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Design, and Art in Bartholomew County, 1942-1965 MPS, Historic Designed Landscapes of Syracuse MPS and many others by searching the National Register Information System database.

Associated National Park Service Program Links:

Virtually visit the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park and the associated Conservation Study Institute, and other National Parks with historic Landscape Architecture significance.

Investigate collections of Teaching with Historic Places classroom-ready lesson plans featuring landscape design, urbanization, conservationism, the role of public parks in U.S. history and celebrating National Park Week and Earth Day.

Guidance for making educated decisions and protecting cultural landscapes—both designed landscapes such as gardens and parks to working vernacular historic landscapes such as farms and industrial sites--from the NPS Historic Landscapes Initiative.

Like its sister programs, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) produces written and graphic records of interest to educators, land managers, and preservation planners documenting the variety of American landscapes.

The Park Historic Structures and Cultural Landscapes Programs provide direction and demonstrate high quality preservation practices regarding cultural landscapes—ranging from carriage roads to battlefields, designed gardens to vernacular homesteads, and industrial complexes to summer estates-- in the National Park System.

Through grants and technical assistance, the American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) promotes the preservation of historic battlefields associated with wars on American soil.

National Organizations:

American Society of Landscape Architects
Alliance Historic Landscape Preservation
Library of American Landscape History
National Association for Olmsted Parks
The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University
The Garden Conservancy

Previous Landscape Architecture Month features: 2006, 2007