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A Brief History of the Civilian Conservation Corps

"CCC enrollees throughout the country were credited with renewing the nation's decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees between 1933 and 1942."

The 1932 presidential election was a desperate call for help. Upon accepting the Democratic nomination on July 1, 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed addressing soil erosion and declining timber resources by organizing unemployed young men from urban centers. He moved swiftly. On March 9, 1933 — just five days after taking office — he called Congress into emergency session. His proposal: recruit thousands of jobless young men, enroll them in a peacetime military structure, and direct them toward combating the destruction of America's natural resources.

Senate Bill S. 598 was introduced March 27, 1933, passed both houses of Congress, and reached the President's desk for signing on March 31, 1933, as the Emergency Conservation Work legislation. Executive Order 6101, dated April 5, 1933, appointed Robert Fechner — a Boston labor leader — as director and established an advisory council drawing from the Secretaries of War, Labor, Agriculture, and Interior. The Army mobilized what became known as "the most rapid peacetime mobilization in American history." By July 1, 1933, fewer than three months after the executive order, 1,433 working camps had been established and more than 300,000 men were at work.

The program achieved remarkable public backing. A Republican poll showed 67 percent approval; 95 percent of Californians supported it. Even Colonel McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and a Roosevelt adversary, endorsed the CCC. A Chicago judge credited the Corps with a 55 percent reduction in local crime. Communities near camps reported average local purchases of approximately $5,000 monthly — the mandatory $25 allotment checks flowing to enrollees' families were stimulating economies across the country.

More than 40,000 illiterate young men learned to read and write through volunteer activities during non-working hours. Education was not part of the original Emergency Conservation Work Act — it was formally introduced in the 1937 Act, with Clarence S. Marsh appointed the first Director of Education. But the learning happened anyway: in camp libraries, in evening classes, in the simple act of writing letters home.

The years 1935–36 witnessed peak enrollment. By September 1935, approximately 500,000 men occupied roughly 2,600 camps — numbers never again reached. Then the war came. By late summer 1941, departures for private employment had reduced camp populations to fewer than 200,000. After Pearl Harbor, any federal project not directly associated with the war effort lost priority. In June 1942, by a narrow House vote of 158 to 151, funding was curtailed. The Civilian Conservation Corps — technically never abolished — entered history.

By the time it closed, nearly 3 million young men had served in approximately 4,500 camps across all 48 states, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. They planted more than 3 billion trees. They built 711 new state parks and improved 800 more. They erected 3,470 fire lookout towers and laid 97,000 miles of fire roads. They sent $663 million home to their families — the primary income, in many cases, for 12 to 15 million Americans. The heritage of what they built is all around us still.