After a busy day building roads, campsites or thinning the forest, these enrollees were happy to sit and enjoy dinner at their Fish Creek camp in the summer of 1933. They lived in Army tents while their barracks were being built. (Provided photo — JoAnne Perry Manning)

Civilian Conservation Corps Day will be celebrated nationwide on Friday, April 5 because on that day in 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps with Executive Order 6101.

The order set out the framework for how the CCC would be run and established a fund of $10 million for the Corps. This innovative federally funded organization put millions of Americans to work during the Great Depression on projects with environmental benefits.

The CCC was a public works program that operated from 1933 to 1942 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It targeted single men, 18-25 years old, and World War I veterans in relief of families that had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression. The program provided unskilled manual labor in environmental conservation and the development of natural resources in rural lands.

The program employed 3,463,766 men who worked a 40-hour week for $30 a month. The government sent $25 a month home to their parents leaving the boys five dollars spending money. The camps were run by the U. S. Army which provided enrollees with good food, clothing, shelter and medical care.

CCC camps were located in all 48 states and these territories: Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix). There were separate camps: white enrollees, Black enrollees, unemployed veterans who served in World War I and Native Americans who worked on tribal lands.

The U.S. Army supervised the camps, which had 200 men each. There were 26 camps established in the Adirondacks. In 1933 these camps were established in these towns and counties: Arietta and Speculator (Hamilton); Bolton Landing (Warren); Lake Placid, Tahawus, Newcomb, Schroon River and Port Henry (Essex); Wanakena and Benson Mines (St. Lawrence); Paul Smiths, Goldsmith, Tupper Lake and Fish Creek Pond (Franklin). Later these camps were established: Boonville, Brasher Falls, Brushton, Canton, Fort Ann, Harrisville, Indian Lake, Minerva, Plattsburgh-Cumberland Bay, Plattsburgh Barracks and Warrensburg.

In the Adirondacks, enrollees built trails, roads, campsites and dams, stocked fish, built and maintained fire towers, observer’s cabins and telephone lines, fought fires, and planted millions of trees. The CCC disbanded in 1942 due to the need for men in World War II.

During its nine years of existence, CCC enrollees throughout the country were credited with renewing the nation’s decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees. The men labored heroically building hundreds of state and national parks, with cabins, artificial lakes, and water supply systems. Much of the infrastructure in the U.S. National Park Service was created using CCC labor. Enrollees built more than 3,000 fire towers, constructed 46,854 bridges and 125,000 miles of roads, built 13,100 miles of foot trails, stocked 972 million fish and improved 40 million acres of farmland. The education program taught approximately 110,000 illiterate enrollees to read and write.

The billions of trees the Corps planted beautified our state and national parks and exist today to mitigate the effects of global warming! A similar enterprise renewing our natural resources now would benefit all.

To honor the work of the CCC, plan on visiting a state or national park that was developed by the CCC or visit a CCC museum.

Those interested in learning more about the CCC should visit the websites of CCC Legacy and Living New Deal and Corps Network, or the Facebook pages of Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy and Civilian Conservation Corps Day.