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Sunday, October 15, 2017

Civilian Conservation Corps

In 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps began sending hundreds of thousands of men across the United States. From coast to coast, they planted trees, built parks and bridges, and brought widespread erosion under control. Perhaps most importantly, the program put people to work during the Great Depression.

The former CCC drafting office, now a private home.
In 1935, the CCC set up a camp in Franklin County, one of several that would be established in Kansas. The local camp was created to develop the West Tauy Creek watershed, a 27,000-acre region northwest of Ottawa that extends into Douglas County.

On a recent fall morning, several members of the Franklin County Rural History Club visited what is left of the local CCC camp. Our caravan turned off a gravel road and entered the property--now privately owned--to find a handsome stone building that originally served as a drafting office for the CCC. Chuck and Pat Krambeck, our gracious hosts, gave us a tour of the building, which is now a cozy living area in their home. They purchased the property a few years ago from a previous owner who had multiplied the house's square footage with a large, modern addition while preserving the exterior stonework and interior woodwork of the original office. The benefit to the Krambecks, aside from a place to relax and show off their Chiefs and Royals memorabilia, is to live in a building with a rich history.

Sidewalk to nowhere.
In the '30s and early '40s, an average of 180 men at a time called the CCC camp home. They slept in barracks, ate in dining halls, attended services in a chapel, and maintained their equipment in a machine shop. Of the original buildings, only the drafting office remains. Two of the eight barracks were moved, finding new life as a youth center near downtown Ottawa.

Chuck showed us a few other remnants from the CCC days: a long sidewalk, some concrete foundations, and two brick towers that flank the driveway. Attached to the towers are impressive metal gates, which are believed to have come from a brewery in St. Louis that went out of business.

The CCC workers who passed through those gates every day altered the Franklin County landscape forever. An article from the Ottawa Herald dated Aug. 20, 1936, detailed the role of the CCC in working with the Soil Conservation Service to plant hundreds of thousands of black locust, thornless honey locust, mulberry, and hackberry trees in the area. The idea was to control erosion with "vegetative matters," so that "as this type of control progresses the use for masonry and other expensive structures will become less."

In most CCC camps, the workers were young men, 18-25, whose families were receiving government assistance. The men were paid $1 per day, but were required to send most of that back home to their families. These men started out at Army camps for conditioning, then were assigned to their work camps.

Guard cat sees all.
The Franklin County camp was made up of a different group: military veterans. World War I veterans marched on Washington more than once to demand bonus pay they had been promised. To placate the disgruntled vets, Roosevelt authorized the CCC to hire 25,000 of them. They had their own camps and were not restricted by age or marital status.

Some men at the Franklin County camp brought their families, which boosted the local economy. A newspaper article from 1937 reported, "The camp, to which are assigned ex-soldiers from all parts of Kansas, brings approximately $1,500 into Ottawa every month. Over 40 families of officers and enrollees make their homes here, swelling the business that results from expenditures in the actual running of the camp."

Some camps also admitted local men who had experience, such as forestry, that recruits might lack, especially since many came from cities back East. This also helped minimize resentment by out-of-work locals who saw jobs going to men from far away. African-Americans were assigned to segregated camps, since separate-but-equal was still legal at the time. Native Americans were also hired and were allowed to live at home instead of in camps.

What used to rest on this foundation?
When the CCC program officially launched on July 1, 1933, about 250,000 men were enrolled and put to work. This came less than four months after President Roosevelt sent his proposal for the CCC to Congress. Aside from the obvious logistical challenges--such as how to recruit, train, transport, shelter, feed, clothe, and pay these men--multiple government agencies had to get on board with the program and pull in the same direction. The effort involved the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Labor, and War. It has been called the largest peacetime mobilization in American history.

 Prologue Magazine, published by the National Archives, describes the unprecedented feat:

 "No wonder that when it had all been done, some of the central figures could scarcely believe what they had accomplished. At the time the closest parallel anybody could think of was the drafting of 181,000 men into the armed services in the spring of 1917 after the United States had declared war on Germany."
The original drafting office door.
Nine years later, with World War II the top national priority, the CCC program wound down. In its brief existence, though, it accomplished an enormous amount. In fact, the numbers are staggering. Here's a summary of the program from the National Park Service:

"By the time the CCC was terminated in 1942 a total of 2 million enrollees had performed work in 198 CCC camps in 94 national park and monument areas and 697 camps in 881 state, county, and municipal areas. Through the CCC program 711 state parks had been established."

As if that weren't enough, CCC workers planted 3 billion trees during the life of the program. Yes, that's billion with a "b"! It averages out to 1,500 trees per worker.

As a side note, a few people who served in the CCC went on to become famous, including actors Walter Matthau and Raymond Burr, future St. Louis Cardinal Stan "the Man" Musial, and test pilot Chuck Yeager.

When the program ended, the property in Franklin County transferred into private hands; at one point, it served as the Atlasta Pony Farm. Decades removed from its time as a federal program, the property is nevertheless part of a legacy that continues today. "Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy" is even the name of a membership organization that is open to men who participated in the program as well as anyone who wants to learn more and support their efforts. The CCC program has been memorialized in books, websites, and videos, including this brief documentary from Iowa Public Television:



It is always a privilege to be invited into someone's home, and we thank Chuck and Pat for sharing their property and its important history with us. To participate in our local field trips, consider becoming a member of the Franklin County Rural History Club.

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