history
Happy 88th Anniversary, CCC!
If you go to a Texas state park, you may pause for a photo in front of a stone refectory, jump in for a swim by a beautifully engineered dam or spend the night in a rustic cabin that was built in the 1930s by the young workers of the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps.
In the early 1930s, America was experiencing some of the worst economic conditions in its history. At the same time, the country’s natural resources had been devastated by soil erosion, forest overharvesting and loss of wildlife habitat.
Shortly after Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, he asked Congress to give him authority to address both those problems by creating the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which we know as the Civilian Conservation Corps. Congress did so on March 31, 1933, and Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6101 creating the CCC on April 5.
More than 50,000 CCC enrollees served in Texas, constructing parks from the ground up across the state, essentially creating the Texas state park system.
Today, TPWD manages 29 CCC-built parks. The cabins, shelters, trails, bridges and refectories create these parks’ distinctive character. Find a list of these beautiful, historic features and see them for yourself at tpwd.texas.gov/ccc.
Louie Bond Lake Brownwood: Sonja Sommerfeld | TPWD; Bastrop: Chase Fountain | TPWD; Daingerfeld: Earl Nottingham | TPWD; Blanco: Sonja Sommerfeld | TPWD
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