Neatrour, Anna. Roosevelt’s Tree Army: Civilian Conservation Corps. Digital Public Library of America. September 2015. <a href="https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20201218122539/https://dp.la/exhibitions/civilian-conservation-corps">https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20201218122539/https://dp.la/exhibitions/civilian-conservation-corps</a>.

https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20201218122539/http://dp.la/api/items/context

Mountain West Digital Library

Emery County (UT) History Photographs

Emery County (Utah)

Civilian Conservation Corps

Officers

Mortensen, Orlon

<h2>CCC Beginnings</h2>
During the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, droughts in combination with farming practices that encouraged erosion created homelessness and environmental devastation. Because they were unable to grow and harvest crops, farming families were forced to leave their homes, only to find few job prospects during the Great Depression. The severe economic and environmental consequences of erosion made the need for conservation in the 1930s even more important.
Franklin Roosevelt previously worked on reforestation programs on a small scale at his family’s estate in Hyde Park, New York and as governor of New York. In this role, he supported reforestation and giving unemployed men temporary jobs to plant trees and work on conservation programs for the state. When Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination for president, he proclaimed: “We know that a very hopeful and immediate means of relief, both for the unemployed and for agriculture, will come from a wide plan of the converting of many millions of acres of marginal and unused land into timber land through reforestation.”
Similar programs using unemployed men for work planting trees and other conservation projects took place in other states in the early 1930s. In the spring of 1933, Roosevelt requested that the Departments of War, the Interior, Agriculture, and Labor join forces to develop a plan for unemployment relief through the creation of a civilian conservation corps, which would work on conservation projects. This initiative would coordinate programs on a national level that had previously operated within individual states.

History of the CCC

Young men in the camps were paid thirty dollars per month, or one dollar per day. Twenty-five dollars a month was sent home to help their families and they were allowed to keep the rest for their own spending. The additional support sent home to the families of the CCC meant that the economic impact of the relief work was dispersed across the country. While the camps were originally set to house younger men, the government raised age limits in order to raise enrollment. Camp leaders were able to earn an extra fifteen dollars per month and assistant leaders earned an extra six dollars per month. Unemployed World War I veterans were also able to enlist in separate camps where there were fewer restrictions.
The majority of the CCC enrollees were young, white men. Some integrated camps allowed African Americans to enroll in the program, but as the CCC progressed, it developed a small number of segregated camps for African Americans. Native Americans also participated in a separate program in the CCC’s “Indian Division.”

Enrollees

<h2>Reforestation and Nature Conservation Programs</h2>
CCC reforestation projects took place in state parks, national parks, and private land forests. The US Forest Service employed skilled woodsmen alongside the camp enrollees to assist with forestry programs. This had the benefit of providing essential guidance to young men who had not been out in nature for an extended time before, in addition to providing employment to local workers from the surrounding region.
The CCC also worked on nature conservation and wildlife protection programs. Leo Young worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps on the Bear River Bird Refuge, and commented in a 1972 oral history: “They’ve done a lot of good on the refuge. They hauled rock and the initial graveling of the dikes was done by the CCC boys. They hauled gravel on the dikes and smoothed the beaches. They also helped in gathering sick ducks, fencing, nesting surveys, and projects like that.”
One example of pest control as a conservation activity was the Mormon Cricket Project on Blue Mountain. The CCC built trenches to trap and exterminate Mormon crickets, flightless insects that can cause damage to crops and rangeland if they break out in large swarms.
Some of the programs that the CCC developed look counterproductive when compared against current environmental knowledge. Swamps were drained as part of mosquito control projects, which had negative effects on the wildlife of many areas. Soil erosion in the southern states was fought by planting the invasive plant kudzu as ground cover. Kudzu is popularly known as the “vine that ate the south.”

Nature Conservation and Recreation

<h2>Segregated CCC Programs</h2>
Oscar De Priest, an African American Congressman from Illinois, added an amendment to the original legislation authorizing the CCC stating: "That in employing citizens for the purpose of this Act, no discrimination shall be made on account of race, color, and creed." This was an important anti-discrimination measure, and did ensure that some African Americans were employed by the CCC. But in practice, there was great discrimination during the selection process and running of the CCC camps for African Americans. A few early CCC camps were somewhat integrated, but this soon changed as the national CCC administration established separate camps for African Americans. 
The limited inclusion of African Americans in the CCC was an injustice in the context of a broad climate of discrimination and crisis for black Americans, who desperately needed work relief programs. In the early 1930s, unemployment for African Americans was soaring, and the people who were unemployed were already existing in conditions of extreme poverty. During the height of the Great Depression, while twenty-five percent of white men were unemployed, African American unemployment reached fifty percent.
Native Americans were also given a limited opportunity to participate in special CCC programs developed in collaboration with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Native American CCC enrollees often focused on much-needed infrastructure and improvements on reservations. Out of the over three million men who participated in the CCC program for much needed work relief, only 200,000 African American and 80,000 Native American men were able to enroll.

Camps for African Americans and Native Americans

<h2>End of the Program and World War II</h2>
Towards the end of the 1930s, there was starting to be less demand for the work relief programs provided by the CCC. The improved economy in the late 30s also led to increased desertion among the CCC men. There were also isolated incidents of revolts or refusal to work in a small number of camps. The sudden death of the director of the CCC Robert Fechner in 1939 also contributed to administrative difficulties within the program. 
The military involvement with the CCC had occasionally been a source of tension between those who viewed the program solely as a work relief program and those who saw opportunities for recruitment of young men for the military. In response to the war in Europe, in the early 1940s the CCC camps were also doing basic military drills in addition to their regular work.
The Army benefited greatly with practices of logistics, transportation, and discipline through managing the CCC. The men of the CCC who enlisted in World War II were already used to military discipline and having to live and work alongside a variety of other men. CCC camps helped with logistical support on military bases in the early 1940s. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the CCC camps that were not contributing to the military effort were closed. Funding for the program was eliminated in 1942.

Legacy

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was one of the most popular of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. The CCC’s mission was to conserve the natural resources of the United States while providing relief to the poor and encouraging the recovery of the economy. The program provided employment to enrolllees and financial support to their families during the Great Depression, while developing much needed conservation and infrastructure projects for a country that had been devastated by over logging and farming practices that contributed to soil erosion. Known as "Roosevelt's Tree Army," the program improved national and state parks, prevented erosion, controlled flooding, and assisted with natural disaster recovery. 
The unemployment rate during the Great Depression was estimated at twenty-five percent, which left a generation of young men without employment or opportunities. During its operation from 1933 to 1938, the CCC employed close to three million previously unemployed young men, although it disproportionately assisted whites. This exhibition tells the stories of the CCC’s administration and controversial policies, the men who joined, and the contributions its projects made to the history of conservation in the United States.

Roosevelt's Tree Army: The Civilian Conservation Corps

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