The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

FDR had put a great deal of effort into the reforestation of his family estate in Hyde Park, and that became the first emphasis of the CCC, which quickly came to be called “Roosevelt’s Tree Army.” The enrollees were put to work planting natively adapted tree seedlings in logged-over areas and badly eroded fields. This relatively brief nine-year effort, directed by the U.S. Forest Service, was so extensive and so successful that modern conservationists believe that it was responsible for more than half the total public and private reforestation that has been achieved in the nation’s entire history.

But when the Dust Bowl hit in 1934, the need for soil conservation was on everyone’s mind, and the CCC was put to work to remedy the environmental and human disaster created by fifty years of poor agricultural practice. The number of camps was dramatically expanded, most of them located in the Dust Bowl region, under the direction of the Soil Conservation Service, and the CCC set to work plowing hundreds of miles of contour terraces to reduce slope erosion (some of which I can still see on our own Central Texas homestead), building farm ponds, controlling gullies, and planting soil-holding crops. In some areas, the need was for drainage; nearly 85 million acres of agricultural land were reclaimed by CCC workers, many of them Native Americans.

In other areas, the CCC did extraordinary and heroic work during natural disasters, like the Ohio River flood of 1937, the 1938 New England hurricane, floods in Vermont and New York, and blizzards in Utah and Wyoming. The CCC also developed recreational facilities in national, state, county, and metropolitan parks. Here in Texas, 29 parks were created or improved by the CCC. Nationally, by the close of the program in 1942, the CCC had developed more than 3 million acres for park use in 854 state parks, as well as 46 recreational demonstration projects in 62 areas within 24 states. In national parks and wilderness areas, CCC work on park trails, campgrounds, and picnic areas resulted in large increases in recreational use, which in turn improved hundreds of local economies.

The CCC was not without its difficulties, of course. Early efforts to integrate white and black enrollees ran into trouble, both in the camps and in nearby local communities. Logistics—moving men, materials, and equipment through difficult terrain—presented large challenges. As the Depression waned and job opportunities increased, fewer men enrolled in the program, and desertions and disciplinary problems increased. And there was the occasional unfortunate instance of fraud. In 1937, Reno Stitely, chief of the CCC Voucher Unit, was arrested for using fake payroll vouchers to embezzle nearly $85,000. Stitely’s trial was a media sensation.

By the summer of 1940, France had fallen to Germany, and while Americans were strongly isolationist, President Roosevelt was looking ahead to the possibility of war. He permitted CCC camps to be established on military bases where enrollees built airfields, military facilities, artillery ranges, and training fields. The CCC expanded its educational program to include engineering, blueprint reading, and other skills that might be of military use, and the young men were spending up to twenty hours a week in military drills. When the first one-year military conscription took place in September 1940, enrollment in the camps sharply declined, and by Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), many of the CCC enrollees had already entered military service. Camps that were not directly related to the war effort were ordered to be closed by May 1942. A few months later, Congress appropriated funds to close all of the camps. The program was over.


*

A note about language. To write about the people of the 1930s rural South requires the use of terms that may be offensive to some readers—especially “colored,” “colored folk,” and “Negro” when they are used to refer to African Americans. Thank you for understanding that I mean no offense.

Susan Wittig Albert

Bertram, Texas





Resources


Here are some books I found helpful in creating The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O’Clock Lady. You will also find numerous resources listed in the five earlier books in the series.



Cohen, Stan. The Tree Army: A Pictorial History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942 (1980).

Davis, Ren and Helen. Our Mark on This Land: A Guide to the Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps in America’s Parks (2011).