The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942, and Its Places on the National Register

The young men of Company 2314-C at Kane, Pennsylvania, studying radio code so they could run the camp's radio station. Credit: National Archives.

The Wall Street crash of 1929 was the main trigger of the Great Depression. At its height, about 24.9% of Americans — 12,830,000 people — were out of work. Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency in 1932, took office the next year, and in 1933 his administration launched the banking reforms, relief and work programmes and farm programmes that made up the New Deal.

A work programme for young men

One of the earliest New Deal work programmes was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Its purpose was to relieve unemployment with national conservation work, mainly for young unmarried men — planting trees, building parks and flood barriers, and fighting forest fires.

• Scale. At its peak the CCC employed 500,000 men at once, and over its nine years (1933–1942) it gave work to more than 3 million.
• Pay. Set at the president's discretion at $30 a month, of which $25 went to the enrollee's family. Congress left Roosevelt wide authority over the programme; an amendment banning racial discrimination was nearly the only limit it imposed.
• Speed. Less than three months after the first enrollees settled at Camp Roosevelt in Virginia in 1933, 300,000 men from across the country had been enrolled and settled in about 1,500 camps, each typically holding 200.

President Franklin Roosevelt visiting CCC enrollees at Big Meadows, Skyline Drive, Virginia, August 12, 1933. Seated from left: Maj. Gen. Paul B. Malone, Louis M. Howe, Harold L. Ickes, Robert Fechner, Roosevelt, Henry A. Wallace and Rexford Tugwell. Credit: National Archives.

Segregated camps and Native American enrollees

• African Americans. Segregation was still held lawful under the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of "separate but equal," so separate "colored" CCC camps were set up. By the end there had been about 150 such camps for more than 200,000 African American enrollees.
• Native Americans were at first barred, but the ban was lifted within weeks because of the dire conditions on most reservations. The Interior Department's Office of Indian Affairs ran the programme for Indigenous enrollees on reservations; more than 80,000 Native Americans took part.

Growth and decline

By its fifth year, 1937, the CCC was a proven success with enormous public support and more than 3,500 camps in operation. Camp numbers then fell — to 1,500 by April 1939. As unemployment eased and World War II began, the United States started supplying its allies in September 1940, and the CCC's work was expected to shift towards national defence. The programme was nonetheless wound down: young men left for better jobs, and replacements were hard to find. On April 1, 1941, camps were cut from 1,500 to 1,100, and on June 30, 1942, after the United States entered the war, Congress voted to liquidate the CCC.

What it left

About 75% of enrollees worked on projects run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; most of the rest were assigned to the Department of the Interior, which placed them with the National Park Service.

The CCC also inspired the American Climate Corps, begun in 2023 to place young people in clean energy, conservation and climate-resilience work; its first class was sworn in in June 2024, in paid positions through federal, state and local partnerships.

Camps and other properties the CCC built are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register keeps a list of those with the Civilian Conservation Corps named as architect, generated in September 2024.

Sources

• National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, "CCC Properties Listed in the National Register of Historic Places," researched and written by Eliza Vegas, an intern with the National Register. https://www.nps.gov/articles/ccc-properties-listed-in-the-national-register-of-historic-places.htm
• The article cites Joseph Speakman, "Into the Woods: The First Year of the Civilian Conservation Corps," Prologue 38, no. 3 (Fall 2006), and works by the Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, Rocky Mountain National Park and the Library of Congress.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.