The Civilian Conservation Corps–Indian Division at Grand Portage

Worried about what the Great Depression was doing to American Indians, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs created a version of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) for reservations. First called Indian Emergency Conservation Work and later the Civilian Conservation Corps–Indian Division (CCC-ID), it had seven districts, each run by a CCC work supervisor. On each reservation the superintendent and a local forestry or irrigation representative chose the projects, and the tribal council administered them.

The rules differed from the regular CCC. Enrollees did not have to be between 18 and 25, though they did have to be physically fit. They had to assign a "substantial part" of their wages to dependent relatives, or let the Indian agency hold the money and pay it out to those dependents in installments over the winter. Most worked on their own reservation, and living in camp was optional.

Grand Portage joins

The Consolidated Chippewa were the first in Minnesota to take part. In May 1933 the Commissioner tentatively set aside six months of funding for work by 200 men from these bands. The Grand Portage Band welcomed the help: the fish market, its main source of income, was depressed. The CCC-ID employed about 25 men from Grand Portage, a community of fewer than 400 people.

The Grand Portage camp itself was not built until 1936, but Band members began emergency relief work in 1933, clearing nine miles of the Grand Portage trail. Along the way they found a number of artifacts, which went to the Cook County Historical Society.

The work

Grand Portage crews did the standard CCC-ID jobs — trails, roads, buildings, telephone lines and forestry — and, like the rest of the Consolidated Chippewa, concentrated on preventing white pine blister rust. They also built:

• footbridges and the Stone Bridge;
• the Sophie Mountain Lookout Tower;
• truck and foot trails and telephone lines;
• the Tamarack Point picnic grounds;
• a new ranger station at Grand Portage Village;

and they seeded wild rice at Swamp Lake, rebuilt the stockade road and restored the stockade.

Enrollees learned job skills along the way, with classes in forestry, English and math and training in carpentry, cabinetmaking and rustic furniture. The camp was also known for its teams: it won the North Shore Champions Trophy in baseball and basketball in 1936 and in basketball again in 1937, as well as a gold loving cup for sportsmanship.

Rebuilding the fur trade post

Excavating the old depot site. NPS photo.

Much of the interest centered on the area's history. Working with the Minnesota Historical Society in 1936 and 1937, camp enrollees excavated the site of the North West Company's former fur trading post and found where the stockade and the Great Hall had stood. They put up a replica stockade enclosing about three acres, and in the winter of 1939–40 rebuilt the Great Hall from the archaeological evidence. Inside was a small museum of Chippewa-made objects produced through a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.

A quilled and beaded sash from the 1930s, made through the WPA. NPS photo.

Remembered

Oral histories add to the record. Jim Wipson was only 16 when he joined the CCC-ID, claiming to be older, and spent part of his service at Grand Portage helping rebuild the stockade; his mother did sewing and beadwork there for the WPA. Betty Lou Hoffman remembered the old fort as central to community life: many people helped build it, and many women made crafts there that were displayed at the fort.

Sources

• National Park Service, Grand Portage National Monument: "Civilian Conservation Corp Indian Division at Grand Portage," adapted from the Historic American Engineering Record. The article places the Commissioner who created the program under President Herbert Hoover; that attribution is left out here.