Tag Archives: C.C.C.

What We Owe to the C.C.C.

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Two weeks ago in this space we looked at the C.C.C., or Civilian Conservation Corps, and what it did locally during the New Deal of 1933 to 1942. C.C.C. was a one-year employment program for young men (or in some cases, Great War veterans), focusing on outdoor work. Watkins Glen, Allegany, Stony Brook, Buttermilk, Taughannock, and Robert Treman State Parks all owe a great deal of their infrastructure to the C.C.C., and they did some of the earliest work to create Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge.
Besides that, they were called into service after the catastrophic 1935 flood killed 44 people. That flood flowed in part from poor land use practices – a problem the state geologist had warned about well before the Civil War. The U.S. Soil Service made the upper Conhocton River, especially the Avoca area, a showcase soil conservation project. Part of this included reforestation, and C.C.C. lads created many tree plantations, including one in the shape of a giant “A” that overlooked Avoca for many years. (It was partly removed when the Southern Tier Expressway came in.) A drainage ditch in Howard, near Buena Vista, is probably C.C.C. Work.
The C.C.C. men put in roads, drainage, and stone buildings for Chenango Valley State Park… not to mention a nine-hole golf course. C.C.C. crews working in Green Lakes State Park in Fayetteville included a company of veterans from the SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR!
Since much of the New Deal was created “on the run,” the C.C.C. was put under charge of the only government agency used to dealing with large numbers of young men – the army.
But these were VERY LARGE numbers in the Triple-Cees. Military men like Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower learned how to work with that – a skill that would be vital in the World War II years of 1940-45.
They also learned to work with men who expected to be treated as citizens, rather than as recruits to be abused and screamed at.
The generation that grew up in the Depression largely missed out on medical care, dental care, and proper diet. In the Triple-Cees they ate well, some for the first time in their lives. They got their teeth fixed. They got their vaccinations. They got care for treatable conditions. Over a fifth of World War II recruits washed out medically. Without C.C.C., it would have been far higher.
Young men learned skills (such as construction) that made them employable in the civilian world AND vital in the military. Those who didn’t have diplomas were given courses, and finished high school. Those who were illiterate (a startling percentage) were taught to read – all of which would strengthen the World War II army, and our postwar civilian economy.
President Roosevelt fiercely decreed that the program would have no hint of militarization, and wouldn’t even offer R.O.T.C. – he didn’t want anything even vaguely like the Hitler Youth.
Even so, participants experienced some very basic military features – uniforms, camps, barracks, K.P. When they went into the service in our huge buildup, these men already had a speaking acquaintance with the military way of doing things. It eased their transition, AND the army called on them as leaders for the younger rookies.
Actors Raymond Burr, Robert Mitchum, and Walter Matthau were C.C.C “graduates.” So was Archie Moore, future Light Heavyweight Boxing World Champion. Baseball great Stan Musial was in the C.C.C. Chuck Yeager, World War II fighter ace and first man to break the sound barrier, did his term in the C.C.C. So all in all, we owe a great debt of thanks to the Civilian Conservation Corps.

The C.C.C. Left Its Mark — on Us

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In the midst of the calamitous Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” poured forth new programs designed to put people back to work. One of the most fondly-remembered New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps.
While some companies (as the local units were called) were reserved for Great War veterans, most C.C.C.’s were older male teens who did a year’s service (usually not in their home states), simultaneously getting training. They were clothed, bedded, boarded, and paid, but most of the money went to their parents, who thus had more income and fewer expenses. In addition to that it removed the boys from the job market for a year, making job-seeking just a little bit easier for the unemployed. Photos show that the local contingents were racially integrated, but that wasn’t the case everywhere. (There was a smaller similar program for women, jokingly called the she-she-she, but I don’t believe it operated in our area.)
The main C.C.C. camp for Steuben County was in Kanona, with a “side camp” at Painted Post and temporary camps when and where useful. (The Kanona facility later became a P.O.W. camp in World War II, and then a seasonal camp for migrant farm workers.)
A company of C.C.C. spent the better part of a year camped near Addison with the idea of putting a dam across the Tuscarora Creek, but it was finally decided that the ground was unsuitable. C.C.C. also built a camp for men coming in to construct the Arkport Dam.
Schuyler County had Triple-C camps in Watkins Glen (later Hidden Valley 4-H camp) and Burdett. Their legacy includes a lot of the work in the state park – buildings, trails, stonework, bridges (including the Sentry Bridge near the entrance to the Gorge Trail), and more.
C.C.C. and W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration) also did quite a lot of development in Stony Brook State Park, though with the passage of time it’s hard to tell which group did what. Much of the older park infrastructure, including the two Rim Trails, comes from this period.
In the Ithaca area, according to the Ithaca Journal, C.C.C. fellows were “trucked to work sites in Enfield Glen (later Robert H. Treman), Buttermilk Falls, and Taughannock Falls State Parks. There they excavated flagstone and did masonry work, blasted, excavated fill, graded, planted trees, shrubs and grass, built roads, bridges, and water systems, erected park buildings, and – after the disastrous floods of July 1935 and August 1937 – repaired damaged facilities that in many cases they had only recently completed.” The Gorge Trail at Treman comes from this work.
C.C.C. also completed major development at Allegany State Park near Salamanca. Sections of the Finger Lakes Trail and North Country Trail were originally created by the C.C.C.
Many of the state parks had been designated, if not fully executed, by Robert Moses back in the early 1920s. What we now call Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, in marshes at the north end of Cayuga Lake, got its start in 1937. C.C.C. established a camp at Montezuma and performed much of the earliest work, including creating low dikes to restore the historic marsh area.
And that ain’t all – as we’ll see next week! In addition to all the work manifestly done, C.C.C. played an indirect role in the winning of World War II, and that will also be part of next week’s story.

We’re Still Using New Deal Construction

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A couple of weeks ago, we looked a little at how local folks experienced the Great Depression of roughly 1929-1941. It was a nightmare, but all our efforts to get OUT of the Depression left a very positive mark on our country, and on us locally.

When New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, he threw himself into “the New Deal,” hoping to soften the Depression and build a better future. Social Security was a New Deal program. So was repeal of Prohibition, which put Keuka Lake grapegrowers, shippers, and winemakers back into business.

Putting people to work on construction became a hallmark of the New Deal – the government paid to have the old unused trolley tracks pulled up in Penn Yan.

More visible was work done right in the heart of our coverage area. Painted Post got a new post office, still in use today, with a mural in the lobby (artists need to eat, too). And we’re still crossing the Chemung River on Bridge Street… that bridge was the biggest New Deal project in Corning.

At Bath V.A., which the U.S. had only recently taken over from the state, many of the facilities went back to the 1870s. So one day in 1936 the last surviving Civil War resident wielded a shovel from his wheelchair to ceremonially begin construction of a new modern hospital, which is still in use today.

Roosevelt was a Democrat, but Republican U. S. Representative W. Sterling Cole made sure to secure the funds for the new hospital… AND a new nursing home care unit, AND a new entry bridge… all of them still in use. The V.A. also got reforesting, to the tune of a quarter million seedlings.

Sterling further arranged to vastly expand the Bath Memorial Hospital, now the Pro Action building on Steuben Street, with a new wing joining the two original buildings.

Hammondsport got a brand new school to replace the old Academy, much of which went back before the Civil War. The Glenn H. Curtiss Memorial School, built partly on the old Curtiss home grounds donated by Glenn’s widow, was a K-12 school. It was so cutting-edge that it actually had television when it opened in 1936. Curtiss School was used into the 21st century, and is now privately owned.

Franklin Academy in Prattsburgh also got a hand up. The original 19th-century building burned in 1923 and was replaced the following year. By 1935 it already needed updating, so Prattsburgh got a thorough renovation AND a substantial addition, giving birth to Prattsburgh Central School.

Prattsburgh found that the project was going to run way over the promised funding, so two men went to New York City to plead for more. The official there said he couldn’t do anything, but urged them to go to Washington. Their story of the needs of Prattsburgh’s people had brought tears to his eyes, he said, and a higher authority might be convinced to release more funds. Down they went, sharing a railroad berth to save expenses, and got the funds they needed. Another agency went even further, putting in a ball diamond and athletic fields. The 1935-36 work is still the heart of the school.

Kanona was home to a camp of Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) lads… older teens hired for a year of conservation-related work. C.C.C. created much of the infrastructure for Stony Brook State Park and Watkins Glen State Park, and after catastrophic flooding in 1935 the boys worked mightily on flood-control and soil-conservation projects. The Army Corps of Engineers built dams and Arkport and Almond, while Avoca, Corning, and Addison got improved flood barriers. Believe it or not, the 1972 flood could have been much worse than it was. Some of the thanks should go to Franklin D. Roosevelt.