Isle Royale’s Civilian Conservation Corps camps, 1935 to 1941

View of the Siskiwit Bay CCC camp from the water tower, 1938. NPS Photo / National Visual Inventory Cards 30-137 / J.F. Kieley.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) came to Isle Royale in 1935 to prepare the island for life as a national park. In the summer of 1936 the crews found themselves fighting a forest fire instead. 1,800 men from the CCC, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard worked for almost three months to control it, and it consumed 20 percent of the island’s forests.

Buying an island

Federal acquisition of the land was long and difficult. Owners, and people with a history of using land they did not legally own, were asked to donate or sell to the Park Service at one dollar an acre for mineral rights and four dollars an acre for surface rights, with approximate increases for structures and other improvements. Owners were offered life leases in return for donating. Special Use Permits went to resort owners and fishermen: many summer residents and fishermen accepted, but the resort owners sold outright.

For planning, the Park Service consulted University of Michigan zoologist Adolph Murie, who visited in June 1935. He recommended that the CCC clear no new trails and that planners guard against development that would reduce space or increase travel. He also suggested letting forest fires occur, but the Service rejected that and adopted an aggressive anti-fire approach. Since 1935, many of Murie’s ideas have guided park management.

Three camps

A follow-up committee set the first season’s projects: clear fire-prone timber slashings left by the George W. Mead Company’s logging near Siskiwit Bay, erect navigational aids, begin wildlife management and build base camps. Nearly 200 enrollees and four officers came ashore at Senter Point in August 1935 to create Camp Siskiwit.

Working from these camps and smaller satellite camps, crews built administrative buildings, employee housing, recreational facilities, docks, campgrounds, fire towers and day markers for navigation. They also surveyed wildlife, caught island moose for mainland repopulation projects and fought fires.

CCC crews making cedar shakes to roof the large warehouse buildings at Mott Island. NPS Photo / National Visual Inventory Cards 30-212.

Life on the island

The camps were seasonal. Transportation to Houghton, Michigan, was unreliable and the distance great, so enrollees lived simply and were lucky to leave the island once a month. Mainland camps often had a nearby town, dances and ball fields, but the park’s wilderness doctrine ruled out the standard recreational facilities, and activities were limited to horseshoe pitching, hiking, archery and water sports, mostly outdoors. Enrollees received vocational rather than academic training, including mechanical drawing, radio operation, photography, typing and nautical skills, and many got good jobs after discharge.

Interior of a barracks building, Camp Siskiwit. NPS Photo / National Visual Inventory Cards 30-224.

1935 and 1936

By September 1935 the park projects were under way. In that first season the crews graded a trail from Senter Point to Lake Desor, built a ski-patrol cabin, cleared slashings along former lumber trails, built a small dock at Senter Point, and constructed a moose corral and a range study area. George Baggley of the National Park Service toured the island at the season’s end and recommended better transportation, a base administrative and supply center on the mainland, better radio connections, more elaborate tourist facilities and minimal interior trails and shelters. He became the national park’s first superintendent.

In June 1936 about 400 enrollees arrived. Camp Rock Harbor was built, and a supply base went up at Houghton. Army officers directed the camps while Park Service staff supervised field work, and progress was often slow because the two sides quarreled over priorities and how to run the camps. The fire started in late July from the lumber piles left by the previous year’s logging and was not brought under control until September 15, when rain and cooler weather arrived. That winter, 115 recruits volunteered to stay and clear the remaining fire hazards, attend classes, capture moose to send to other parts of Michigan and repair camp buildings. They also built an ice skating rink. The Park Service ran the winter camp like a lumber camp rather than a military base, with supplies that included a team of horses, a herd of pigs and chickens, better food, radio contact with Houghton and a CCC physician on the island.

CCC pumper crew, circa 1936. NPS Photo / National Visual Inventory Cards 30-021.

CCC supply boat in the late 1930s. NPS Photo / National Visual Inventory Cards 30-248.

1937 to 1941

The 1937 to 1940 seasons were highly productive. A fire observation tower went up at Feldtmann Ridge, resorts on Belle Isle and Rock Harbor were improved, and so was boat service. In spring 1937 recruits built an ice house, a warehouse, a temporary administration headquarters and a utility dock at Caribou Island. Superintendent Baggley then decided to build headquarters at Mott Island instead of expanding Caribou Island, because Mott Island sits near the main island and its harbor is deep enough for heavy vessels yet sheltered from Lake Superior storms. In 1938 the Mott Island work included a warehouse, officers’ quarters, a water storage tank and sanitary facilities, new utilities, docks for deep-draft vessels, five boat campgrounds, shipping-lane markers and buoys, plus a radio network to Houghton.

Camp Windigo in 1939. NPS Photo / National Visual Inventory Cards 30-228.

In winter 1939 the Park Service decided the visitor accommodations at the west end needed major work. The old Washington Club was renovated and became the Windigo Inn. Camp Windigo was authorized in June 1939 as its base camp, shipped as a portable camp to Houghton in July, built by the Army and finished at the end of the 1939 season except for some work on the bath house and water system. Enrollees also made a trail from Siskiwit Bay to Windigo along an abandoned mining road, and built a ski patrol cabin and a dock.

Isle Royale officially became a national park on April 3, 1940, once the Secretary of the Interior accepted the deeds to all lands on the island. Camp Siskiwit was disbanded at the end of the 1940 season, and in September 1941 the last CCC enrollees left when Camp Rock Harbor and Camp Windigo closed.

Sources

• National Park Service, CCC Years at Isle Royale: 1935 to 1941, Isle Royale National Park; rewritten in hubnx's own words.