The Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps

The hardships of the Great Depression of the early part of the twentieth century lead to many drastic decisions by our countries leaders on how to deal with the problem. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States at the time, decided to infiltrate the country with government money to create jobs and better the country as a whole. The Civilian corps">Conservation Corps, or CCC created many of these jobs.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, which was established in 1933 to conserve the wilderness and give young able men jobs. This program was one of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that were to bring the country out of the depression. The Civilian Conservation Corps took in unmarried men from ages eighteen to twenty-five and moved them to the wilderness to work. They planted trees, built parks, fought soil erosion, and preformed timber culturing (Davidson 718).

The Civilian Conservation Corps set up camps all over the country with many of them right here in the western part of Virginia. There were eight different camps in the Shenandoah Valley. Seeing as the Shenandoah Valley, specifically Staunton is where I am from, I wish to focus on the three camps that were located within Augusta County. North River, West Augusta, and Sherando were the names of the three camps located within Augusta County.

North River Camp, also known as Mount Solon Camp, was first established on May 31, 1933 by one hundred eighty-six men. These men first had to create a clearing for the camp and establish living quarters. They built nineteen different buildings for

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uses such as recreation, dining, worship, storage and sleep. The camp men built many of the surrounding areas attractions. These men developed an intricate maze of fire roads, horseback trails and timber paths for future development of the National Forest in that area of Augusta County. Another accomplishment of this particular camp was the cleaning up of Staunton Dam, or Elkhorn Lake. This lake supplied the camp and Staunton with its water and had been contaminated by erosion. The men spent considerable time fixing the erosion problem and beautifying the area into a wilderness attraction. Now many families still retreat to this lake for picnics and camping trips.

The West Augusta Camp was located further into the wilderness than the North River Camp or the Sherando Camp. The West Augusta Camp men spent most of their time constructing roads throughout the underdeveloped and extremely impoverished area.