Iowa's CCC: a lasting legacy

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This article first appeared in INHF's Fall 2006 magazine.

by Bill Horine

Ed Rood

Author Bill Horine stands on one of the park trails he and other CCC workers built 72 years ago. The trail is located in Sharon Bluffs State Park near Centerville.

In March of 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the formation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to meet two pressing needs:

• employ young men left unemployed by the grinding, nationwide depression and
  
  
• invigorate crop lands that had eroded due to poor farming practices.
  

President Roosevelt hoped that the program would boost the economy—while keeping the men out of trouble and building their morale. However, he couldn't have known just how far the CCC’s effects would extend into the future. You can still spot the CCC’s lasting effects on Iowa’s landscape and its participants—including me.

CCC overview

The CCC was supervised by the U.S. Army—and the military influence was apparent in the camps’ set-up, management and discipline. Other government agencies—such as the National Park Service, the Forest Service and the Soil Conservation Service—helped arrange individual work projects.

Typical CCC projects involved planting trees (3 billion trees nationwide!), building soil erosion dams, constructing park trails and structures, and otherwise preserving natural resources that were taking a beating from the nationwide drought and depression.

The program—which lasted from 1933 to 1942—also provided good nutrition, work, wages and job skills for more than 3 million Americans, including about 46,000 men working in Iowa.

The CCC and me

I graduated from Wilson High in Cherokee in 1933—about the trough of the Depression—and finding steady work was nearly impossible. It was day labor for 50 cents a day if you could find it.

I gratefully joined the CCC in July 1934 and was assigned to Company 774 in Centerville. In that first year of Iowa’s CCC, 12,800 men worked in 34 Iowa camps. Requirements for joining the CCC were simple: Enrollees had to be young, single, healthy and unemployed. The original sign-up period was for six months, with possible extensions.

I received the standard monthly CCC wage of $30. The government automatically sent $25 of that home to our parents—and that money was a great help to my folks and many like them. With the government covering our living expenses, that $5 covered almost anything else we might need—like cigarettes (10 cents per pack), stamps (3 cents for a first class stamp), magazines, stationery, candy (5 cents per bar) and movie tickets (15 cents).

	CCC Company 774, stationed at Centerville, posed for this picture in 1935. Author and company member Bill Horine is standing in the top row, fourth from the left, “with the cap jauntily on my head.” Bill was among 46,000 Iowans to serve in the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1934 to 1942.

Camp life

A typical CCC camp was organized in military fashion—with barracks, mess hall, camp store, infirmary, camp office, tool shed and, of course, latrines.

Upon arriving in camp, we were subjected to a strict military regimen—an adaptation that came in handy to those of us who later entered the various military services. The military schedule meant rising before dawn, securing and policing the barracks, having breakfast and then going to work on assigned tasks. If we were in the field, lunch would be brought and coffee made over an open fire. Then back to camp, get cleaned up and in clean clothes in time for the 5:15 dinner bell. Everyone also had to take a turn at kitchen duty—also known as KP (Kitchen Police).

Of course, camp life was not all work. Evening brought time for mail call or to write a letter home. We had baseball, basketball, football, boxing and track teams—and the rivalry between camps could be intense.

We were also allowed to get passes and go home occasionally on weekends. Since most of us had no money for bus fare, we could either hitchhike or bum rides on local trains. Investigating the train possibilities, I found out that by changing several lines we could travel all night and arrive in Cherokee the following morning, disheveled, dirty, full of cinders and smoke, but home. We would hitchhike back to Centerville on Sunday afternoon.

Other times we could get weekend passes and visit friends in neighboring CCC camps. My friend, Cliff Peck, was stationed in camp 773 at nearby Drakesville. One weekend we hitchhiked into Oskaloosa to go to the movie, thinking we could get back to camp later. We couldn't catch a ride that evening to save our souls. We prevailed on the town marshall to let us stay in the local jail overnight as we had no money for a hotel room. He let us stay overnight, released us in the morning and even gave each of us a quarter to get our breakfast.

In addition to our job training, the CCC offered us evening classes. Some CCC workers received their high school diplomas this way. Others took correspondence or college courses. For example, I remember studying typing and journalism.

The results

My first work in Company 774 was on soil erosion projects. The Iowa CCC built thousands of erosion-control structures, particularly in the southern counties. Such projects took on particular urgency during these “dust bowl” years.

Later, I was fortunate to join a crew constructing trails in a proposed park east of Centerville—now Sharon Bluffs State Park. We also built a stone shelter house, one of more than 700 structures built by CCC workers in Iowa’s state parks. Other Iowa crews planted millions of trees on newly acquired state forest lands.

All this work—from trails to picnic tables to stone lodges—was done by hand and from native materials. Many of these structures are still in use today—and some have been placed on historic registries to recognize their distinct architectural style.

However, the CCC legacy can also be found in its workers—including me. While I’d always been an outdoor kid, the CCC helped me learn more about nature—like about trees and erosion control. That, and the journalism and typing courses I took at camp, contributed greatly to my future career and personal interests.

Though I’m now age 91 and many decades removed from my CCC service, I still feel proud—and lucky—to have been a part of it.

See additional photos of CCC projects

Get additional web resources on the CCC

For more information, e-mail Cathy Engstrom, Director of Communications, or call (515) 288-1846.