This month in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC as it’s commonly called, in an effort to ease crippling unemployment in the U.S.
The CCC was just one of many programs put forth under Roosevelt’s New Deal during the worst economic downturn in the country’s history: the Great Depression. Programs like the CCC, which put young men to work developing parks and conservation areas, employed people all across America. And Texas was no exception.
When talk of a Texas CCC began, the state already owned several historical sites and other lands that had been donated. But with the economy in a stranglehold, there was no money to do anything with them. Officials jumped at the chance to make use of New Deal resources.
And so thousands of young men flocked to the camps, which were run military fashion by U.S. Army officers. At its peak in Texas, more than 19,000 men worked at 96 camps. About 50,000 men in total worked for the Texas CCC in the nine years it was in operation. Workers, mostly below the age of 20, installed power lines and built cabins, bathrooms, pavilions, footbridges, trails and dams.
All in all, the Texas CCC developed 56 state parks. The first were at Davis Mountains, Caddo Lake, Blanco and Mineral Wells. Today, 29 of these parks are managed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
The Texas CCC developed the state’s first national forests, too. The young men employed at the camps in the 1930s planted an estimated 3 million trees in these wild spaces. Today, the lands of Angeline, Davy Crockett, Sabine and Sam Houston national forests comprise about 638,000 acres.
And then there were the farms. In many areas of Texas, intensive farming had caused much of the once-rich topsoil to simply wash away. Recognizing the need for soil conservation, the CCC taught about 5,000 farmers how to terrace their fields and practice what’s known as contour planting.
The Texas CCC was meant to help pull tens of thousands of young men and their families out of extreme poverty, which it did. But it also played a big part in shaping the Lone Star State. Today’s Texans continue to benefit from its work.
