The Civilian Conservation Corps at Wupatki, Sunset Crater and Walnut Canyon

Young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) spent part of their youth working at Sunset Crater, Wupatki and Walnut Canyon national monuments near Flagstaff, and left their mark there: in the steps winding down to the Island Trail at Walnut Canyon, in a first visitor center that blended into its surroundings, and in a ranger residence at Wupatki that looks as if it grew from the land.

A CCC member in front of Wupatki Pueblo. Image from the National Park Service’s page.

The Mount Elden camp

The men belonged to the Mount Elden CCC Camp in Flagstaff, about two hundred strong, part of a national effort that among other things helped the National Park Service build and improve roads, trails and facilities. One of them, Albert Spudy, remembered years later that he would gladly go back tomorrow if asked — he joined because he loved the work and thought the “three Cs” would help him make something better of himself.

Building to fit the land

The CCC gave the Park Service a workforce to carry out its master plans. To keep the natural character of each landscape, roads, trails and buildings were designed to blend into their settings, with stone quarried on site and native materials used to join the new to the old. The built environment that Park Service landscape architects designed and the CCC built still shapes visitors’ experience across the park system, from Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone to small monuments like these three.

CCC workers around the flagpole at Wupatki. Image from the National Park Service’s page.

A national program

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the CCC — first called the Emergency Conservation Work program — to give poor young men of the Depression a chance to improve their education and earning power, and to conserve the nation’s human and natural resources together. Between 1933 and 1942, two million men worked in more than 1,200 camps. Across the country they:

• built 63,256 buildings and 3,116 lookout towers;
• built 28,087 miles of trails;
• put up 405,037 signs, markers and monuments;
• planted 45 million trees;
• developed more than 800 state parks; and
• fought countless fires.

Thousands learned trades that lasted a lifetime, along with lasting friendships and pride.

The end — and the legacy

The United States’ entry into World War II spelled the end of the CCC; Congress ended the program on July 2, 1942. Its legacy lives on in the landscape and in the memories of its members and their families, kept alive by CCC alumni chapters. The Flagstaff Area National Monuments and 11 other parks in the Southwest received a Save America’s Treasures grant to conserve CCC-era items — furniture, light fixtures, signs, photographs and personal belongings.

Sources

Based on "Civilian Conservation Corps at Wupatki," Flagstaff Area National Monuments, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain, with a former enrollee’s recollections rewritten in hubnx’s own words.