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1930s, '40s CCC subject of songs, stories

21.05.12

A part of the New Deal that President Franklin D. Roosevelt put forth, it provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments.

"Roosevelt had a great ideal. He said let's take these young men off the streets and put them to work.," Jamerson said. "CCC camps were 20 to 30 miles from the nearest towns. They were in the boondocks. The camps looked like an Army camp."

More than 3 million young men enlisted in the CCC during the Great Depression and were sent to work camps in America's wilderness and rural areas. They planted trees, fought forest fires, constructed roads, worked on soil erosion control programs and participated in thousands of projects restoring the nation's natural resources.

"There were a lot of hungry people in America," Jamerson said. "They didn't have Mountain Dew and candy bars and chicken wings. So you can imagine them showing up in the

Source: Burlington Hawk Eye