TEXAS CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS AND MY GRANDFATHER

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My paternal grandfather, grandmother, and four young children, with another one in the grave and one on the way, were going through hard times, as was the rest of the country during the Great Depression. They were sharecroppers on hardscrabble soil in the middle of nowhere East Texas. Rural America was hit particularly hard. The only food source was from a garden and the few chickens they raised. My grandmother, a canning expert, saved them through the cold winters. As a child, I remember hundreds of canned fruit and vegetables in the cellar behind her home in Memphis, Texas. The cellar also became her refuge when frequent thunderstorms and tornadoes blew through the town.

My grandfather must have felt helpless as he watched his family slowly inch toward starvation. As the family gathered around the radio one afternoon in 1933, President Roosevelt announced his Civilian Conservation Corps program. The CCC’s goal was to provide employment to poor, unmarried men, thus simultaneously helping their families of origin. The men lived a semi-military existence in work camps, planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting forest fires, developing state and national parks, and maintaining forest roads and trails for $1 per day. Since their food and shelter were provided, they were required to send 75% of their salary home to their families. A total of 3,000,000 men were provided work from 1933 to 1942. There were 50,000 CCC workers in Texas. CCC projects were in all the states and territories. If you’ve been to any state or national parks in the United States, chances are that you’ve seen buildings or trails built by those men.

Eventually, married men were allowed to participate. My grandfather left the farm to work on CCC projects in Texas for two years. He moved his family to Memphis after his stint in the work camps.

I remember my father taking us to many Texas state parks when I was growing up and telling us the story of his father working in the CCC camps. I don’t know which state park he helped build, but to this day, I think of him when I visit one of them. It wasn’t long after the end of the program that the United States entered WWII. Many of those same men joined the Armed Forces, including my father, at 17 and a few months shy of completing his senior year of high school.

My grandfather died of a heart attack when he was age 58. After his death, a bus ticket to see his newly born grandson, my younger brother, was found on his chest of drawers. My brother was the first grandchild to take his name, Raymond, although it was shortened to “Ray” and was his middle name.

The following is a list of the Texas state parks created by the CCC: Abilene, Balmorhea, Bastrop, Big Spring, Blanco, Bonham, Buescher, Caddo Lake, Cleburne, Daingerfield, Davis Mountains, Fort Parker, Garner, Goliad, Goose Island, Huntsville, Indian Lodge (located in the Davis Mountains), Inks Lake, Lake Brownwood, Lake Corpus Christi, Lockhart, Longhorn Cavern, Meridian, Mission Tejas, Mother Neff, Palmetto, Palo Duro Canyon, Possum Kingdom, Tyler.

Thank you for your hard work during hard times. RIP.

(First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt advocated for a comparable program for young women (dubbed "She-She-She camps"). With the help of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, ninety such camps for young women were established by 1936.)

Below: Remaining CCC building at Palo Duro Canyon State Park