Today makes the 79th anniversary of the establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Roosevelt’s Forest Army. On March 21, 1933, a day after entering office as President in the midst of the Great Depression, Roosevelt sent to Congress a proposal outlining measures designed to kick start the economy and put men back to work. Within that proposal was a provision “to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work, not interfering with normal employment, and confining itself to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control and similar projects.” Later that same day, the Emergency Conservation Work Act was introduced in Congress and passed by voice vote in both houses within 10 days and signed by Roosevelt immediately. The act authorized the President to create emergency conservation work programs that would exist on a temporary basis and would need periodic reauthorization and appropriation by Congress.
Follow me after the fold for a closer look at the history of the CCC, the Texas State parks system and the architecture the two created in the Texas parks in the 1930's and 40's. (Warning picture intensive)
The Civilian Conservation Corps is formed
On April 5, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6101 creating the Civilian Conservation Corps as just such an emergency conservation work program. While a modern viewer would likely see the program as a bureaucratic and logistical nightmare, doomed to fail with no central authority, drawing on the resources of four cabinet departments whose secretaries could wield more power than the titular head of the program, the swiftness with which the CCC was organized and implemented is a testament to the ingenuity and cooperation of those leaders.
The Labor Department, using the rolls of the welfare relief programs, recruited the young, single, unemployed men aged 17 to 25 (later expanded to ages 16 to 28) to work in the CCC camps. The War Department enrolled the recruits at centralized locations, providing lodging, meals and clothing and coordinated the transportation of the men, divided into companies of approximately 200, to their work sites. The Agriculture Department identified and evaluated forest and soil conservation projects where the men would be put to work. The Interior Department identified projects the camps could work on within the national parks and evaluated and directed the creation of a network of state parks throughout the United States, almost singlehandedly creating park systems in a number of states where they were either non-existent and practically such. When the CCC program was expanded to include veterans after a second mass protest my the Bonus Army, the Veterans Administration identified the unemployed WWI veterans that were organized into separate CCC companies from the youth companies.
Within 3 months of being established, the CCC had a quarter million junior enrollees (both white and black), 28,000 veterans and 14,000 Native Americans organized into 1,500 camps around the country, a mobilization accomplishment that exceeded America’s entry into the First World War. The junior enrollees were considered unskilled labor, but capable of performing the large scale grunt labor that most project work would entail. The camps were however supplemented by thousands of LEMs, locally experienced men, who were hired from the camp’s local community to perform and teach the more skilled tasks. Youth enrollees served six month enrollments and earned $30 a month for their work, of which $25 was sent home.
The CCC is perhaps one of the most popular programs in American history. It was certainly one of the most popular New Deal programs. A 1936 American Institute of Public Opinion (now known as Gallup) poll found 82% of Americans in favor of the CCC camps with 80%+ support in every region of the country and by a margin of 92% to 8% among Democrats. Two years later, another Gallup poll showed 78% of those polled favoring making the CCC a permanent agency.
The Texas Park System
One state that benefited greatly from the CCC in the dramatic expansion of its state park system was Texas. In fact, Texas is one of the states where there was practically no state park system until the CCC. By 1933 when the CCC was created Texas has had a Texas State Parks Board for a decade, but there had been little in the way of progress in establishing parks. The board owed its existence to the persistence of Governor Pat Neff who pushed for the creation of natural parks as a means of driving tourism and stimulating road improvement.
The only Texas parks up to that point were historical in nature. The Alamo in San Antonio, site of the famous battle of the Texas Revolution where a small band of Texians unsuccessfully defended a fortified Spanish mission complex against overwhelming odds, was purchased by the state in 1883. In 1907, the state also purchased the land that was the site of the Battle of San Jacinto where Texas secured its independence from Mexico, routing the Mexicans and capturing the Mexican President and General in a battle that lasted all of 18 minutes. The state also acquired the sites of other battle of the Texas Revolution: Coleto Creek, where Texas Col Fannin was forced to surrender to the Mexican Army before being marched to Goliad and massacred; Gonzales where the first shots of the Texas Revolution had occurred in October 1835; and the public square in Refugio, where Texans held off Mexican forces while allowing the town’s population to evacuate. The fledgling system also include the site of the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence and a small 6 acre track of pecan groves along the Leon River in Coryell County, willed to the State by Isabella Neff, the Governor’s mother, in 1921. Named Mother Neff Memorial Park, this recent addition was the only unit of the system that could be labeled a natural park.
To help change that, Neff secured passage and signed the bill creating a six member Texas State Parks Board. To satisfy the Legislature, the board members were to be uncompensated for their work and the Board itself was granted no budget and no infrastructure, but Neff considered it a step in the right direction and better than nothing. He appointed a San Antonio automobile dealer named David E. Colp to chair the Board. Colp was active in Texas politics, particularly in advocating for more improved roads, which would no doubt enhanced his automobile sales. Other Board slots were filled by a rancher, two journalists and three women active in the state’s Women’s Clubs, a constituency Neff deemed essential to organizing any park movement. But with no money, the Board members had to rely on lobbying and generating publicity to advance their ideas, and had, being kind, limited success.
|
The first Texas State Parks Board with Governor Neff in 1924. Colp is standing at the far left. Governor Neff is second from the left. |
Colp’s initial strategy, owing to his business interest and the needs of the expanding motoring public was to find small scenic spots along the highways where camping facilities could built to encourage car campers to stay there instead of haphazardly along the roadsides. By 1925, the Board had identified 64 such sites. As he was leaving office in January of 1925, Neff addressed a joint session of the Legislature imploring them to fund the Parks Board to the tune of $50,000 to acquire the 64 sites and develop them, but the legislature would have none of it instead stipulating the state would at this time only accept donated land and only on the condition that the donor or local government provide the funding for the park’s development and maintenance, but did budget $375 for the Board’s operation. As a result, only 23 sites became park of the system, funded generally by the local government as their own means of encouraging travels to drive by way of their town over another.
Undeterred, Colp began planning out a more expansive park system, identifying other natural sites suitable for park development. Now former Governor Pat Neff later joined Colp as a member of the Parks Board and together with their other board members organized several caravan trips around the state visiting potential park sites.
|
|
David E. Colp (left) and Governor Pat Neff (right). |
The CCC comes to Texas
When the CCC began looking at sites in Texas for park development, they naturally turned to Colp and Neff, but soon found the Texas State Parks Board to be a penniless, powerless and hardly worthy of note. When Colp asserted the Board to be the only legitimate authority through which the CCC could organize its Texas park projects, the CCC threatened to cancel all Texas park projects unless the Board demonstrated it had the money and manpower to maintain the parks once the projects were complete. The tight pursed Legislature refused to allocate so much as a penny in their 1934 special session, but after Colp and Neff went to the newspapers pleading their case before the people of Texas, Governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson responded with a one-time $25,000 grant out of an emergency fund. The Board immediate used the money to bolster its credentials hiring a staff engineer, architect, landscape architect, construction superintendent and many other support staff. While the funding was only temporary, it was enough for the CCC projects in Texas, which were already underway, to continue. Many of the sites the CCC and National Park Service had selected for development as state parks were those championed by Colp and Neff, such as Palo Duro Canyon, Caddo Lake and the Davis Mountains.
By the time the CCC was disbanded in 1942, they had worked on more than 50 park sites in Texas. Some 29 of those sites gained state park status and remain today as shining examples of the National Park Service Rustic architecture.
Architecture
Architecture and landscape architecture played an important role in all CCC developments nationwide. The National Park Service was intimately involved in guiding architectural choices and designed. In the southwest, this was evidenced by the renowned National Park Service architect Herbert Maier being assigned as regional director of the CCC headquartered in Oklahoma City.
Maier had been one of the defining architects of the National Park Service Rustic style. In the 1920’s he had designed the lookout on Glacier Point and the museum in the Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National park. In Yellowstone, the four trailside museum constructed in 1928 at Madison, Norris, Old Faithful and Fishing Bridge were his designs. In the Grand Canyon, he designed the Yavapai Observation Station on the south rim. The National Park Service’s arrowhead emblem was also his doing. Along with architects Gilbert Stanley Underwood and Albert Good and landscape architect Thomas Vint, Maier laid out the principles of park architecture and produced a pattern book titles Park and Recreation Structures as a guide to the architects that would design the CCC structures across the country.
Overseeing Maier’s design principles in the Texas Parks would be landscape architect George Nason, the National Park Service’s Senior Inspector for Texas. Together with Colp, both Nason and Maier guided the local architects commissioned for the park designs. Designs were drafted for refectories (bath houses), concession/combination buildings, cabins, water and observation towers, bridges and culverts and even water fountains.
|
Former Governor Patt Neff (2nd from left), Texas State Parks Board Chair David Colp (3rd from left) and CCC regional Director Herbert Maier (4th from left) inspect progress at Palmetto State Park in Ottine. |
Under Maier’s vision for park architecture, buildings were inherently intrusive structures, so pains had to be taken to make them blend into their surroundings. Materials used in construction had to be native, such as locally quarried stone and locally harvested timber. Structures other than water towers and observation towers should be single story so as not to tower over the tree line. Buildings often had a dressing of roughly hewn rock around their base to make it seem as though the building is merely an extension of a rocky outcrop, thereby transmitting that the building is supposed to be there because it quite literally grew from the ground. In each park the architect could add their own artistic interpretation. These slight differences along with the difference in materials available at the different locations give the buildings different appearances, but also a unified theme.
|
The cornerstone is laid for a building at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Texas State Parks Board Chair David Colp holds the trowl and NPS Senior Inspector for Texas George Nason stands at the right. |
(photos above courtesy of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas State Library and Archives. Pictures below courtesy of me. ;-)
The CCC buildings in the Texas Parks
The Concession Buildings, Refectories and Combination Buildings
|
|
Concession Building at Abilene State Park with small observation tower. Designed by architect David Castle.
|
|
|
Lockhart State Park Combination Building designed by architect Olin Smith.
|
|
|
|
Palmetto State Park Combination Building designed by architect Olin Smith. The building originally had a thatched roof made from the dwarf palmettos that give the park its name that blended the building further with its surroundings.
|
|
|
Blanco State Park Concession Building designed by architect Olin Boese.
|
|
|
Lake Brownwood State Park Concession Building designed by architect Roy E. Lane.
|
|
|
|
Mother Neff State Park Concession Building designed by architect Guy Newhall.
|
|
|
Mother Neff State Park Pavilion designed by architect Guy Newhall.
|
|
|
|
|
Refectory Building at Bastrop State Park. Designed by architect Arthur Fehr, this building and the other CCC built structures were designated a National Historic Landmark, one of only 6 CCC parks to receive such a designation nationwide. The buildings were recently saved from the destruction wrought by the massive Bastrop Complex Fire from September-October 2011 that burned 95% of Bastrop State Park.
|
The Water & Observation Towers
|
Observation Tower at Longhorn Cavern State Park. Designed by architect Samuel C.P Vosper.
|
|
Water Tower at Lockhart State Park. Designed by architect George T. Patrick.
|
|
Lookout/Water Tower at Mother Neff State Park. Designed by unknown architect.
|
|
Water Tower at Palmetto State Park.
|
|
Water Tower at Abilene State Park.
|
|
Pump House & Garage at Buescher State Park.
|
Park Administration Buildings
|
|
|
|
The original park administration building at Longhorn Cavern State Park, now used as an exhibit hall. The building has lots of great detail work. Designed by architect Samuel C.P Vosper.
|
|
The Caretaker's Cabin now used as the park administration building at Palmetto State Park. Designed by architect R.W. Thompson.
|
|
The interpretive center at Palo Duro Canyon State Park, originally designed to serve as a lodge.
|
Cabins
|
|
|
Cabins at Bastrop State Park. Designed by architect Arthur Fehr. Saved from destruction by fire in September 2011, the park has more than a dozen of these individually and uniquely designed cabins.
|
|
One of the more than a dozen CCC built cabins situated overlooking Lake Brownwood in Lake Brownwood State Park.
|
Other Structures
|
|
The CCC built a dam impounding the Blanco River at Blanco State Park to create a "swimming hole" for park visitors.
|
|
|
The Lost Pines Overlook in Bastrop State Park stood at the top of a ridge on the Lost Pines Trail providing hikers a nice resting stop. Like the other overlook structure in the park, Fehr's Overlook, the structure was heavily damaged in the Bastrop Complex Fire in September 2011, a fire that burned 95% of Bastrop State Park along with over 1,000 homes in the Bastrop area. Designed by architect Arthur Fehr
|
|
Caretaker's house at Buescher State Park.
|
|
|
Drinking fountain and culvert at Inks Lake State Park.
|
|
|
|
Lookout House, grand staircase down to the lake and camper benches at Lake Brownwood State Park.
|
|
|
Officer's cabin at Longhorn Cavern State Park.
|
|
|
Entrance Portal for Longhorn Cavern State Park.
|
|
Small dam at Lockhart State Park.
|