Shenandoah's Landscape and the Civilian Conservation Corps

By Reed Engle, cultural resource specialist, from Shenandoah National Park's Resource Management Newsletter, January 1997.

Two Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees beside erosion-control work on a hillside.

The park's archive of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) "Job Application and Completion Records" keeps revealing how much the landscape was reshaped in Shenandoah's early years. A few typical reports:

Trout pools on Big Run

Job 9/905, completed February 7, 1939 — "Stream Development, Big Run, Grottoes." Along six miles of stream, with 900 man-days of work and $100, crews dammed two large pools and four small ones with big boulders so the water would back up. The aim was "to provide a series of trout pools along the stream," and the report judged the result satisfactory: "an appearance of natural rock work."

Clearing along new trails

Job 60/603, completed June 27, 1940 — "Fire Hazard Reduction Trailside." The job cleaned up and disposed of burnable debris, natural or left from building the new recreational, bridle and foot trails, in a strip averaging 40 feet wide on each side. It covered 93.8 miles of trail, took 9,220 man-days and cost $218.58.

Clearing along Skyline Drive

Job 56/603, completed June 19, 1940 — "Fire Hazard Reduction, Roadside." Of Skyline Drive's 96.05 miles, 21.0 ran through open or semi-open country and needed no treatment; 69.2 miles through other sections had been cleaned up so far. Standard "woodside" treatment ran 50 to 250 feet wide depending on the debris and the lie of the land. The job took 14,911 man-days and cost $1,347.57.

Reshaping road cuts

Job 61/706, closed July 17, 1941 — "Fine Grading, Road Slopes." Steep cut banks along Skyline Drive were laid back to a gentler angle so the soil could be held by seeding and planting — about fifteen miles of banks in the north section, twenty in the central and ten in the south. The job was closed unfinished because it had overrun its units, and continued as a new job, No. 317. It touched 113.9 acres, took 39,121 man-days and cost $1,034.65.

Sources

• National Park Service, Shenandoah National Park, Shenandoah National Park Landscape and the CCC, by Reed Engle.