C.C.C. Side Camps

Life in a Civilian Conservation Corps side camp could be rustic to say the least. In this post we'll take a brief look at how the side camps were set up.

While most CCC camps were situated close to the main project site where the enrollees worked, there were also many, many work sites in remote places that needed the attention of CCC workers. It simply wasn’t practical to transport enrollees over miles and miles of remote roads to these work sites, and then return to camp at the end of the workday. To resolve this dilemma, smaller camps known as “spike camps,” “side camps,” or “fly camps” were established. But no matter what they were called, those small non-permanent camps established well away from larger CCC camps, were responsible for an astonishing amount of useful work that otherwise would not have been possible.

Side camps were initially an area of dispute. The technical services wanted the side camps placed under their control, an arrangement that both the Army and director Fechner opposed. Since the operation of the main camps was under their control, the Army reasoned that it should also be in charge of the side camps, with the technical services taking charge of the enrollees during normal work hours.

In July1933, President Roosevelt approved the establishment of side camps and he placed them under the control of the technical agencies with the requirement that not more than 10 percent of the company strength be assigned to them. One reason for Roosevelt’s decision may have been that, to place an army officer in each side camp would have stretched the military organization too thin, leading to a decline in management and leadership throughout the program. Despite their being exempt from direct Army control, there were guidelines on the layout of the side camps. For example, a Forest Service plan for a 25-man camp provided for five canvas tents, each 16 by 16 feet to house the enrollees. Three tents measuring 9 by 9 feet provided shelter for supervisory staff. The mess unit operated out of a tent measuring 19 by 21 feet and additional shelters were provided for the kitchen, the cook, the infirmary and office, as well as latrine and shower facilities. Even in these smaller camps, the provision was always made for a flagpole, usually placed in a central location in the camp area.

Forest Service plans also provided guidelines for a mobile 25-man camp, which consisted of 12 two-man shelter tents, three staff tents, one cook tent and a tent to serve as a combination mess and kitchen. Despite the lack of Army involvement, life in a mobile camp may have been quite similar to life in an infantry platoon. Each man was to be supplied with an infantry pack, canteen and mess kit. In the mobile configuration, the need for a kitchen unit could be eliminated if each enrollee carried five days of rations with him and the crew returned to base camp on weekends to re-provision.

The Night Before Christmas (with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the camp
The captain went strolling with a kerosene lamp.
The tools were all hung in the tool shop with care,
In hopes that Kris Kringle soon would be there.
With the enrollees nestled all snug in their bunks,
The Captain went prowling for raccoons and skunks.
The foremen in wool socks, the LEMs in their shorts,
Were snoring away in a chorus of snorts.

When out by the flagpole there arose such a noise
The captain was worried it might wake his boys.
Away to the mess hall he flew like a flash,
Thinking some dog robber was sampling the hash.
The moonlight on a forest covered in snow
Gave luster of midday to the camp below
When, what to the captain’s tired eyes should appear,
But a shiny stake bed truck rolling up in high gear!

With a little old driver, whose bells gave a jingle,
The captain knew right away it must be Kris Kringle
Smoother than silk that little REO ran
And Old Kris gave a chuckle and waved his gloved hand.
The captain couldn’t be sure, but gazing from afar,
Old Kris Kringle looked a bit like FDR.
Kris pulled the truck up to the mess hall in a slide
Then bounded up the stairs and went inside.

The captain rushed up to peek though the door
Naturally inquisitive, wanting to see more.
Kris didn’t make a sound but kept his eye on the ball,
As he expertly spruced up the camp mess hall.
Red garlands and green streamers he tacked up with care,
Knowing that hungry peavies soon would be there.

A huge holiday feast he prepared in a flash,
Turkey and dressing with no sign of hash!
And over it all Kris spoke a whispered prayer
For the families back home whose boys wouldn’t be there.
“Keep them safe and happy,” Kris whispered with a sigh
And with a gloved hand, wiped a tear from his eye.
Then, having completed an honest night’s work,
Kris turned toward the mess hall door with a jerk.

Then back to the little work truck he dashed
And lifting the clutch, the gas pedal he mashed.
To see that truck speed through camp was a sight,
But the captain knew it would be a busy night.
Kris Kringle had to hustle and be on his way
To visit all the CCC camps before light of day.
But the captain heard Kris exclaim with a flash of headlights,
“Merry Christmas CCC Boys and to all a good night!”

Holidays In The C.C.C.

Typically, any enrollee who had earned the privilege and who wanted to would be allowed to go home for the holidays if time permitted and distances were not too great. However, between 1933 and 1942 any Civilian Conservation Corps enrollee or camp supervisor who could not get leave found himself away from home during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. To ease the pain of separation from family and loved-ones, most C.C.C. camps prepared special dinners for Thanksgiving and Christmas and held Christmas parties, often “adopting” local children and inviting residents to visit the camps.

A CCC mess hall decorated for a holiday meal.

Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees performed no work on Thanksgiving and Christmas, beyond the duties required to keep the camp running and a special holiday meal would be prepared. Often special menus would be printed describing the day’s meal, occasionally noting that cigars or cigarettes would be available following the meal. Additionally, a Company roster would sometimes be printed in the menu, to become a souvenir of an enrollee’s time in the C.C.C.

The CCC at South Rim, Grand Canyon

The first contingent of Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees arrived at Grand Canyon National Park on May 29, 1933 and for the full lifespan of the CCC, Grand Canyon was home to CCC workers until the program was disbanded in 1942. Civilian Conservation Corps companies 818, 819, 847 and 2833 worked at Grand Canyon in addition to rotating to Phoenix and Tucson to perform work there during the winter months.

Grand Canyon National Park existed prior to the creation of the CCC, however with the abundant manpower made available through the CCC, Grand Canyon gained many infrastructure improvements that it might not otherwise have received. Inevitably, at a park so vast, the casual observer overlooks most of the CCC built improvements, while other improvements require a strenuous hike in order to be viewed and enjoyed. Thankfully, the National Park Service has created a short walking tour that highlights a number of CCC built projects in the area of Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim. What follows is taken largely from the text of the walking tour, with additional information added for clarification or for human interest. The color photos were all taken in November 2007.

The walking tour of CCC sites in Grand Canyon Village begins with the Community Building, just northeast of Parking Lot E. The Community Building was funded with Public Works Administration funds and built with CCC and park labor between 1934 and 1935. The building, which replaced a structure that burned down in 1933, has served as a public library, hosted plays and meetings and served as a theatre for showing movies.


The next stop on the walking tour is a culvert, located near the intersection of Village Loop and Center Road. The Park Service reports that the exact date of construction of this culvert is unknown but it is believed to be a CCC built structure. Close inspection of the culvert – actually two culverts and stone headwalls – shows that the pipes may have been extended in the process of widening Village Loop at some later date. Evidence of the stone ditch lining is still visible downstream of the culvert outlets. The Park Service literature indicates that this culvert has required little maintenance over its life span; a tribute to the beneficial work of the boys in the CCC.



If you proceed along Village Loop a few hundred feet and keep looking to the left, you will see a wooden bridge that leads across a drainage system toward the railroad tracks. The CCC built two wooden bridges across the wash in this area, according to the Park Service walking tour literature. The bridge that remains was completed in 1937. Close inspection will reveal that steel I-beams have been put in place under each side of the bridge; indeed, the timbers were replaced recently when the bridge became unsafe in the 1980s. The current bridge is a careful reproduction, built with the aid of historic photographs.

If you cross Village Loop and proceed in an easterly direction you’ll walk past the former park hospital, which is now home to the Grand Canyon Association. Continue walking and you’ll arrive at the intersection of Village Loop and Navajo Street where you’ll see a rock wall that serves as an entryway to the residential area further up Navajo Street. These rock pillars and walls were constructed in 1934 as a visual barrier between the public area of the park and the residential area on Navajo Street. While documentary proof is lacking, it is believed that the CCC built this rock wall. The Park Service tour brochure notes that the recessed cement between the stones was a common CCC technique and the extensive growth of lichens on the stone gives a clue to the age of the rock wall.


From the intersection of Village Loop and Navajo Street, the route of the walking tour proceeds across the railroad tracks, past the train station and up the steps leading to the historic El Tovar hotel. At this point the visitor is on the flat crest of ground immediately adjacent to the south rim of the canyon and if they proceed to the east along the rim to a point between Hopi House and Verkamps Curios they will see a bench carved out of a huge log. The CCC constructed log benches in conjunction with their work refurbishing the rock wall along the rim. It is believe that this massive bench was created in 1934 or 1935, though no documentation exists to provide proof. It seems ironic that, while the CCC boys seldom left visible markings to identify their work, countless Grand Canyon visitors have seen fit to carve their names into this historic log bench, seemingly in an effort to make their own short visit somehow more meaningful.

Proceed from the log bench in a westerly direction (to your left as you face the canyon) less than 100 feet to the rock wall opposite Hopi House. The walking tour notes indicate that in 1934 and 1935 the CCC completely rebuilt the rock wall along the South Rim from Verkamps Curios to Lookout Studio, replacing a poorly constructed and dilapidated dry wall and a section of wooden fence. The CCC standardized the dimension to 27 inches high and 18 inches wide, with guardrails added in some places. It is worth pointing out that in some places the workers would have been in quite a precarious position as they worked on the wall, but to their credit, no major accidents or injuries were reported as a result of CCC work at Grand Canyon’s South Rim. (Indeed, the only CCC fatalities reported at Grand Canyon were the result of off-duty mishaps that involved a fall from the south rim and a drowning in the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon.)


Proceeding along the rim to the west you’ll come to a flagpole at what is called North Rim View. From here you’ll see – barely – the North Rim’s Grand Canyon Lodge. Company 818 worked on the North Rim in the summers, building structures, fences, fighting forest fires and building roads. During the winter months the men were moved to the bottom of the canyon to areas like Phantom Ranch. Phantom Ranch’s Bright Angel Campground was built by the CCC, as were a number of trails including Ribbon Falls Trail and the nine-mile Clear Creek Trail. CCC enrollees also constructed the Colorado River Trail from 1933 to 1936 and while it is only two miles long, it is reportedly the most difficult and hazardous trail ever constructed in the canyon.

Continue walking westerly to a point in front of Kachina Lodge and you will find a plaque that has been affixed to the top of the stone wall. This plaque commemorates the transcanyon telephone line installed by the CCC. Prior to construction of this transcanyon line, communication between the North and South Rims was unreliable. In order to remedy the situation in 1934, a group of CCC enrollees started from each side of the canyon, working their way towards each other, all the while stringing telephone line on metal poles, down steep cliffs and though narrow gullies, often in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees! When the transcanyon telephone line was completed in 1935 it stretched from the North Rim along North Kaibab Trail to Cottonwood Camp and Phantom Ranch, then across the Colorado River to a spur line on the south Kaibab Trail at a point known as “The Tipoff.” The main line continued along Bright Angel Trail connecting Phantom Ranch to Indian Garden, and then to the South Rim developed area via the rest houses along the trail. The line was used so much that another circuit was added in 1938-1939. The Park Service guide reports that the line included 592 metal poles and, because cell phones do not work with in the canyon, parts of the original telephone line are still in use today. If you look carefully down the slope beyond the plaque on the stone wall, you will see two or more of the metal poles for the telephone line.


Continue walking west past the Thunderbird Lodge, Bright Angel Lodge and Lookout Studio to historic Kolb Studio. In 1936 the CCC built the stairs that lead up the slope toward the mule corral. The stairs were originally of all stone construction without handrails, however the stone treads have been replaced with concrete steps and for safety reasons, a hand rail in now in place. Proceed up these steps and walk to your right, a few hundred feet to the stone and pipe mule corral and the trailhead of Bright Angel Trail.

The Park Service walking tour points out that the Bright Angel Trail was used by American Indians long before the first pioneers arrived in the 1880s. The trail was transferred to the National Park Service in 1928, some five years before the creation of the CCC. The CCC undertook major reconstruction of the trail, completing the work in 1939. Originally the trail was only two to three feet wide in places. Using pick, shovel, drill and dynamite, the boys of the CCC reconstructed and rerouted the trail to its current width of four to six feet. Additionally, the CCC built rustic stone and timber shelters long the trail.

When we consider the remote, rugged beauty of Grand Canyon today, we should also think back to a time when the area was even more remote, some 75 years ago when roads weren’t paved and helicopters hadn’t been invented. The 1930s were a time when any injury in the canyon could mean death and work was undertaken with hand tools and sheer muscle power. Today it’s an easy walk along the rim trail, with a number of opportunities to buy food and drink, and ample places to stop and rest. For the boys of the CCC, their foremen and supervisors, it wasn’t that way. We have them to thank for the fact that we can view the vastness of Grand Canyon in safety and near luxury.

A Blog Action Day Editorial

October 15th has been proclaimed Blog Action Day, with the selected focus being the environment. Nothing could be more pertinent to the story of the Civilian Conservation Corps than the environment and environmental issues. I defy anyone to point to another era in our nation’s history when the better part of a generation was given the opportunity to live and work in nature to improve America’s forests, parks and fields. Between 1933 and 1942 the enrollees of the CCC planted between 2 and 3 billion trees, developed some 800 state parks, built over 13,000 miles of foot trails and developed 52,000 acres of public campgrounds nationwide.

The story of the CCC is so closely intertwined with the environment, one could argue that environmentalism is at least the second biggest reason anyone actually remembers the CCC of 75 years ago. (The number one reason that most folks probably cite for remembering the CCC is that they have a family member who was in the program. This is not to say these same people will actually know anything about the CCC and how it was organized, but they remember the program because of a relative.) A few revisionist historians occasionally remember the CCC as well, but only for the purpose of trying to paint it as part of a larger theoretical failure of the New Deal. Whether or not the New Deal was a failure, I cannot say. However, I can say, without fear of meaningful contradiction, that the CCC was the most successful of the New Deal's many programs.

Parks and even forests that did not exist in 1933 sprang from nothing during the era of the CCC. Then, after four years of national focus on a World War and ridding the world of fascist aggression, Americans were able to return to more pleasant pursuits and there, waiting for them, were the myriad forestry and recreational improvements that the CCC boys had created. Few stopped to remember that a lot of those CCC boys went off to fight that war and didn’t come home to enjoy the fruits of their pre-war labor. Some folks are starting to remember now.

What we think of as “environmentalism” today was probably more akin to “conservationism” in the 1930s. Men (mostly) entered parks and forestry professions because they were good with their hands, knew field craft and could probably whip most comers down at the local tavern on Saturday night. They were called “rangers” or foremen, or supervisors or Local Experienced Men – LEMs for short. Today, their rough edges seem foreign to some of us, but many of their ideals prevail. Who doesn’t marvel at the quiet of a forest? Who isn’t touched by the beauty of sunlight through the treetops? Who isn’t impressed by the careful fit of granite stones placed 70 years ago?

Under the careful tutelage of these conservationists, the boys of the CCC lived and learned, worked and played. They learned to get along, and sometimes they learned the consequences of not getting along. In the process, these boys became conservationists themselves. In some cases the boys saw parts of their country that they otherwise might never have seen, and, on the cusp of traveling overseas to fight and die for that country, they probably gained a new appreciation for their United States.

It isn’t a stretch to say that the Civilian Conservation Corp raised a first generation of conservationists/environmentalists. It also isn’t a stretch to say that most Americans have forgotten that fact.

National CCC Reunion a Huge Success!

Kentucky’s Cumberland Falls State Park played host to the 2007 national reunion of the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni (NACCCA) on September 27th, 28th and 29th. Approximately 110 registrants attended the event and the headcount at the closing banquet seemed to be higher still. Park Naturalist Brett Smitley estimated that of the total in attendance, 70 were former CCC enrollees. Smitley was the primary organizer of the event and his hard work paid off in the form of a satisfying gathering for these former “soil soldiers” and “tree troopers” whose numbers grow thinner with every passing day. (Estimates state that about 1,000 World War II veterans die every day. To place this figure in context, consider the fact that many CCC enrollees were 17 to 20 years of age in 1933 – nine years before the U.S. entered the war.)

Cumberland Falls hosts an annual reunion for local CCC veterans, but this national reunion is the last major gathering before next year’s 75th anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Civilian Conservation Corps, a huge work relief program that put some 3 million young men to work in America’s forests, fields and parks between 1933 and 1942. NACCCA holds a national reunion every fall. Dallas played host in 2006, Rapid City hosted the reunion in 2005 and Phoenix was the host city in 2004.

During the reunion, visitors enjoyed fascinating presentations by Forest Service personnel who described archeological work done at the sites of a number of former CCC camps in Kentucky. Bill Jamerson presented his documentary film on CCC life in Michigan and entertained those gathered with his humorous folks songs describing life as it was in the CCC camps. An authentic bluegrass band, Ballard Ford, provided the entertainment for the big banquet the final night of the reunion.

The reunion setting could not have been more fitting. The CCC constructed numerous improvements in the Cumberland Falls area, including Dupont Lodge and hiking trails that visitors continue to enjoy today. On the CCC Memorial Trail, a careful hiker will find one of the concrete dynamite storage boxes the CCC enrollees placed in the side of a rock outcropping and rest on a well-placed stone bench near the end of the hike.

With former enrollees now in their 80s and 90s, the opportunity for mass gatherings of former CCC boys is quickly fading. Hopefully in the future these events will begin to attract a larger number of historians and students of forest, conservation and recreation history as well as the descendants – sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters - of CCC enrollees, who will gather yearly, not so much as a form of reunion but as a means of honoring the work of the largest peacetime mobilization this nation has ever seen.

"Red" Erwin: CCC Enrollee, Medal of Honor Recipient

This is the story of Henry “Red” Erwin who served in the CCC in Alabama and went on to earn the Medal of Honor in the Pacific Theater. We’ll probably never know for certain how Red’s CCC experience impacted his later life or if it was even partly responsible for his singular act of heroism, but we all know that the CCC played a meaningful part in millions of men’s lives, and while they didn’t all go on to earn the Medal of Honor, they did work together to form the backbone of what is now known as “The Greatest Generation.”

Hard times made a man out of Henry Eugene Erwin at an early age. Born in Docena, Alabama in 1921, his father died when Henry was just 10 years old. As the oldest of several children, he took a job. Gene, as his family called him, dropped out of high school to join the Civilian Conservation Corps where he was put in charge of crews planting kudzu in northern Alabama.

After the CCC, Gene worked in a steel mill before joining the Army in January 1943. Worried the war would pass him by, he passed up a chance to attend Yale. Gene trained on B-17s, then transferred to B-29s where he served as a radio operator. In early 1945 he was shipped to Guam for assignment to the 52nd Bomb Squadron and joined the crew of a B-29 named “City of Los Angeles,” where he promptly picked up the nickname “Red” because of his red hair.

On Erwin’s 18th mission, the squadron was assigned to bomb the Japanese chemical plant at Koriyama, north of Tokyo; the City of Los Angeles was tasked to be the lead bomber. At the rendezvous point, it was Erwin’s job to jettison phosphorous smoke bombs though a tube in the fuselage of the B-29 as the signal for the other planes to form up.

For reason’s unknown, a smoke bomb malfunctioned and exploded in the tube then shot back into the plane striking Erwin in the face. Thick white smoke immediately filled the front of the plane and 1,300 degree phosphorous began to burn Erwin, blinding him, burning off his hair, most of his right ear, part of his nose and large patches of skin.

In addition to Erwin’s wounds, the plane and crew were in mortal danger. Flaming phosphorous was burning through the metal bulkhead. It was now just a question of whether the blinded flight crew would crash into the ocean before the fire reached the bomb bay causing the entire plane to explode in midair.

With tremendous presence of mind, Erwin snatched up the flaming canister and began to work his way forward, pausing painfully to unhook the latch on the navigator’s table, holding the burning bomb between his bare arm and his ribcage to do so. In the process, the white hot “phosphorous burned through his flesh to the bone” according to an Air Force report.

Meanwhile, the pilot and co-pilot were completely blinded by smoke as Erwin inched closer and closer to their position. Once past the navigator’s table, Erwin worked his way forward and threw the phosphorous bomb out the co-pilot’s window.

As the smoke cleared Erwin’s crewmates began to realize what had happened and what Erwin had done. When they saw him, they were horrified. “Are you alright?” one asked. “I’m fine,” Irwin replied. Another crewman had turned a fire extinguisher on Erwin and put out the fire, but the phosphorous continued to burn on and under the skin.

The pilot jettisoned the bomb load and turned for Iwo Jima for an emergency landing as the crew worked to comfort and stabilize Irwin who they knew was dying before their eyes. Irwin never lost consciousness and, as the designated first aid man on the crew, warned them not to administer too much morphine. He even asked, “Is everybody else all right?”

Major General Curtis LeMay, commander of the XXI Bomber Command ordered that the award paperwork for the Medal of Honor be expedited so that the presentation could be made while Irwin was still alive; approval reportedly coming from Washington in record time. There was no Medal of Honor available in the theater, and according to one report, one of Erwin’s squadron mates “appropriated” a Medal of Honor from a display case in Pearl Harbor.

Red Erwin was awarded the Medal of Honor by General LeMay on April 19, 1945 on the Island of Guam. Thirty days after his harrowing mission on the City of Los Angeles, Erwin arrived in Sacramento to continue his miraculous recovery. “I got down to 87 pounds, skin and bones…I didn’t give up.” Erwin told a reporter years later.
Discharged in 1947, Red Erwin underwent 41 surgeries to restore his eye site and the use of one arm. He worked for the Veterans Administration for 37 years, retired with 43.5 years of federal service and received an “outstanding” performance rating every single year. He and his wife raised a son and 3 daughters. Henry Eugene Erwin passed away on January 16, 2002.