For the sixth year in a row, former Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers swapped stories and reminisced about their time in the Great Depression program at Longbow Organizational Campground.
They were joined, for a second year, by a group of current and recent high school students who got a feel for what the historic program was like over the course of the weeks as they did a variety of work for the Sweet Home Ranger District at Longbow.
The CCCs completed millions and millions of projects from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Sweet Home Ranger District Archaeologist Tony Farque said. “Who could have imagined the work that would be accomplished?”
The CCCs built roads, campgrounds, telephone lines, lookouts and much more, Farque said. During those tough times, 40,000 were taught to read.
“In this campground, on this district,” the CCCs were responsible for significant changes, Farque said. Everyone from in Company 2907, stationed right here, did a lot of work.”
Farque portrayed Roy Blake, district ranger from 1926 to 1934, just as the CCC program was beginning. Blake was skeptical of the program as it was starting.
As it turned out, the program changed the face of Willamette National Forest, Farque said. During its stay on the Willamette National Forest, Company 2907 built 35 miles of forest roads, surfaced 14 miles of the roads, constructed 17 miles of telephone line, built four large campgrounds, landscaped four acres of ground around the Cascadia Ranger Station, constructed to dwellings and office, built one gas and oil station and a large storage shed, built six miles of trails and eight bridges and provided 7,000 man-days of firefighting. They company also maintained 400 miles of trails and 350 miles of telephone lines.
“I came into this area in 1936,” Bob Hatfield of Stayton said. It was his first time away from home. “I learned fast what it was to be a man.”
Getting in trouble, it wasn’t the Forest Service or the commander a CCC had to worry about, it was the other’s in the CCC, Hatfield said. “They had a kangaroo court that couldn’t wait.”
Stationed at Cascadia, Hatfield said, they were the “best years of my life.”
Another CCC veteran recalled shooting a bear out of a tree. Another trio remembered coming to the company together from North Dakota, and they have remained lifelong friends. Another CCC veteran told how his company in Iowa built cabins around Lake Wapello.
“How did you hear about the CCCs?” Farque asked one.
“I was hungry,” was the reply.
The CCC program was set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a way to put young men to work during the Great Depression. The program started in 1933 and ended in 1941.
More than 13 million Americans, about one-third of the available workforce, were out of work. People had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Young men were especially vulnerable as they were often untrained, unskilled, unable to gain experience and often without an adequate education. They had little hope for the future.
Corpsmen had to be between 18 and 25 years old. They worked for $30 per month, sending $25 home to dependents, usually parents. They were enrolled for six months at a time and had options for renewal.
A company usually consisted of 200 enrollees> they were often assigned, initially to the Forest Service or National Parks Service to work on conservation projects.
Retired Sweet Home District Ranger Rolf Anderson was guest speaker at the reunion. He is editing a book for release in 2005 with the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The book will feature comments by Forest Service employees from the time it was established until present. He found a number of comments about the CCCs among them.
“Try to imagine a crew of 275 inexperienced men, or I should say, boys, assembled in a very short time, to be organized and started on a program that was tangled in government red tape,” George Morrey, a CCC enrollee on the Siskiyou National Forest and later a Forest Service employee, said. “In addition, this project was supervised by two different departments. The Army was in charge of the camp. The project work was supervised by the Forest Service. However, after a few weeks, the kinks were mostly ironed out, and the result was one of the finest operations with the most lasting good results of any undertaking since the depression started.”
“I am sure, too, that the military forces for the war were better because of the work experience that many of their GIs had gotten as enrollees in the CCC program,” M.M. “Red” Nelson, a forester on the Mt. Baker National Forest, said. Surely, many of the Army officers were better able to command because of the experience gained in the assignments of running camp operations of CCC camps.”
Cascadia CCC camp was located one mile east of Cascadia, just west of the forest boundary.
“This is like coming home,” Hatfield said. His company worked on all the campgrounds on four of the five Sweet Home Ranger District campgrounds. The only one they didn’t work on was Yukwah.
Hatfield and his family have camped out in the area for years, and his children enjoyed the fact their father helped build them.
“We could tell the kids, when they caome to camp, my dad helped build the camp,” daughter Shelly Goertzen said. Noting the students who were present at the reunion, “they came here. Their kids and grandkids can come here, and it will have special meaning if they choose to.”
One summer, when Hatfield was camped at Trout Creek, he and Jan Wellhouser, the camp concessionaire, began talking about the camp, which eventually led to a reunion. He wanted to extend a special thank you to Wellhouser for initiating the reunion.
Modern “CCC workers” included Megan Henson, Jamie Miller, Sarah Moreland, Craig Nix, Amanda O’Brian, Cherie Presley, Valerie Sutton, Timothy Ware, Dustin Hagle, Mark Lewis, Matt Morneault, Jessica Diercks, Wayne Martinez, Jeb Koechig and Amber Lopez. Camp counselors were Pat Davis, Bryan Cobb, Chris Cvtanich and Jessie Smith.