Civilian Conservation Corps in the Black Hills
Lately there has been a renewed interest — and rightly so — in identifying, honoring and recalling names of the veterans of past wars. The men of the Civilian Conservation Corps, most of whom went on to serve in WWII, first worked and improved things right here in our backyard. The CCCs were in service from 1933 to 1942.
A roster listing available at the CCC Museum of South Dakota includes the Army men or other federal agencies, the Local Experienced Men (LEM), enrollees, and anyone associated with the work of the CCCs. Many of the men came from other states to work here and a good share of those men remained after their CCC stints. A record of which men worked on various projects is of great interest to their descendants. When I started the roster, I called the CCC expert at the National Archives and told him what information I had found from local sources. He told me, “You have more that we do in the archives.”
CCC camps printed menus that were given out as souvenirs for special occasions like Thanksgiving or Christmas and the roster of men in camp at that time was printed as part of the menu folder. Finds like that are especially useful. Stories of CCC men telling their memories are vital to having accurate history as they were the primary sources — they lived it.
In South Dakota, CCCs built Custer State Park’s pigtail bridges, the museum and visitor’s center, log bridges, and Stockade (or Doran) Lake. Claire Patterson, a CCC man, told me that one of their many forest projects consisted of 100 men planting 500 trees each, per day, for at least 30 days 15 miles south of Deadwood. He was one of those men. Patterson in later years was the man who “patched” the faces of Mount Rushmore every fall. CCC men worked for $1 per day and were required to send 25 of those dollars home to their families, as it was the Great Depression. They built Horsethief, Mitchell, Roubaix and Sheridan lakes and many more in the Black Hills. Work was done at Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, the Badlands, and Orman Dam and so many more places throughout the state. There was a camp at Pactola but the lake was constructed in 1957.
The Soil Conservation Service and the CCCs built small dams and other projects which were often on private land. Indian CCC Camps were on the reservations and the men did not have to leave their families to participate as they did projects on the reservations.
The Civilian Conservation Corps Museum of South Dakota, located at 23935 Highway 385, Hill City, S.D., is a great stop to learn about the national CCC programs. Men came from various states and you might find a relative on the printed rosters in the museum, located inside the Hill City Visitor Center.
Sanders is the author of five vintage regional photo history books including, “The Civilian Conservation Corps in and Around the Black Hills.”
Sanders’ internet latchstring is always out at peggy@peggysanders.com.
