The History of the Civilian Conservation Corps

Resources Radio, a podcast launched in late 2018 and produced by the Resources editorial team and Resources for the Future (RFF), releases new episodes weekly with hosts Daniel Raimi and Kristin Hayes. Each episode features a special guest who talks about a new or interesting idea in environmental and energy policy.

Transcribed here is one such episode, in which Kristin Hayes talks with Neil Maher, a professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University–Newark. Maher explores the enduring legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a 1930s New Deal program that employed more than three million American men in conservation jobs as the United States recovered from the Great Depression.

President Joe Biden has proposed devoting $10 billion to form the Civilian Climate Corps, a similar program oriented around environmental justice and climate mitigation. While dozens of policymakers are on board with forming the Civilian Climate Corps, any contemporary program can learn from the successes and failures of the original corps that inspired it.

This interview was originally released on April 20, 2021. The transcript of the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Kristin Hayes: I’m really pleased to talk today about the Civilian Conservation Corps. My interest has grown since the advent of the pandemic and all the accompanying discussions about the ways in which the private sector and federal government might be able to put people back to work in this time of such terrible employment conditions.

What was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)? What were its primary aims?

Neil Maher: It was a New Deal program that Franklin Roosevelt initiated during his first 100 days in office. In one of his early fireside chats, he said that we were not only facing an economic crisis; we were facing an environmental crisis, as well. He talked about deforestation and flooding, and he thought the CCC would be a way to solve both crises at the same time, while putting young men to work conserving natural resources.

And it was only men—is that right?

Yes, it was only men between the ages of 18 and 25. It functioned for nine years and did an incredible amount of work, but that issue of being all male is one of the blind spots that we can discuss more.

Yes, let’s talk a little bit more about the demographics of the people involved. How many people worked through the program? What do we know about them?

Over three million young men went through the program. Their families had to be on relief rolls for the young men to qualify for the CCC, so their families were unemployed. It was 50-50 urban and rural men. And they were sent to 200-man camps that were stationed all over the country in forests and near agricultural lands and in parks. They lived there, and they traveled out into the woods to do their work.

Did they represent all races and levels of income? And it sounds like it was a pretty narrow age range: Can you say anything more about why they limited it to ages 18 to 25?

They didn’t allow women to join; also, African Americans were put in segregated camps. Native Americans had a whole separate program that they were put in.

It wasn’t exactly the most accessible or open program, but it did embrace a whole generation of working-class Americans, gave them a job when they didn’t have one, and fed them. It helped their families, as well, because of the pay that these young men got, the majority of it—$25 of the $30-a-month paycheck—went home to their families.

How big was the set of people who were on public relief? Had they started off at various levels of income, only to find themselves on relief during the Depression?

It’s hard to know. When the Depression hit, we reached a 25 percent unemployment rate; one in four Americans were unemployed. Many, many young men were unemployed. If anything, jobs were going to the breadwinners in families—the fathers. The CCC was a way to get the young men out of the house, get them off street corners, and give them jobs that would help their families and take some of the financial pressure off those families. It was working-class young men.

What did the jobs actually look like?

It began, primarily, as a tree-planting program, so the camps would plant trees in forests. They planted two billion trees, which was half the trees planted in US history up to that time.

In 1934, the Dust Bowl hit the Great Plains, and the corps expanded its work into soil conservation, conserving 40 million acres of land.

And then, in the late 1930s, it expanded again into park development work. The corps developed 800 new state parks from the ground up and basically improved every national park in the country. All told, they transformed an area that’s larger than California—a massive amount of work.

That’s a pretty significant legacy. Even just having that picture of the CCC’s scale is impressive.

Roosevelt was very aware that a lot of people didn’t know what the corps was doing. So, in the 1930s, they promoted it extensively all over the country: advertisements, news reels, magazine articles. They were very aware of the promotional efforts that were needed to get everyone on board.

Another thing I’ve been curious about is the training programs associated with the CCC. Were there training programs? If so, what did they look like?

Training was essential to the program. Roosevelt thought of the CCC as the conservation of two different resources—the natural resources out in the woods, on farms, and in parks, but also the human resources of these young men.

The corps argued and showed that it trained these young men while they were on the job. The young men would leave their camps and go into the forests and work with foresters, or they’d work on farms with agronomists, and they would learn about those sciences through their work.

When they came back to the camp, they could take classes after dinner. Many of those classes were vocational, like automotive classes or even learning how to type—a lot of literacy classes—but there were also classes in what were called the conservation sciences. Many of these young men, later on, went into conservation-related jobs. They were trained well.

I’m sitting here thinking, “Wow, what a marvelous program.” Yet I am sure that there may be significant concerns about how it was designed or who was included. Let’s talk about some of the downsides—at least looking back from the twenty-first century. What are some of the things that people criticize about the CCC?

When Roosevelt proposed it, the unions were quite alarmed because they felt that it would take work away from workers. Roosevelt then adjusted and tweaked the program in ways that would alleviate those concerns. He hired two unionists to run the program, which helped. Then, he made sure that the young men would do mostly manual labor, so it was supposed to not interfere with the more skilled labor of many of those union workers.

An African American congressman opposed the corps because it was segregated, so Roosevelt adjusted it, accounting for population percentages in each state. The program allowed African Americans to enroll according to those populations.

During the 1930s, people pushed back against the corps because of its work. In some instances, the corps undertook work that was ecologically unsound. We have to remember that the science of ecology back then was in its infancy.

Can you give some examples?

For instance, the reforestation program. They tended to plant single species of trees in straight rows. This method decreased biodiversity and made forests more prone to pest infestations and diseases.

Along the eastern seaboard, the CCC tried to control mosquitoes by draining swamps, which hurt migratory bird habitats.

To control soil, the CCC used a lot of invasive species to hold that soil—including kudzu, a Japanese invasive species that is now rampant all over the South. Kudzu also was a good fodder crop for cattle, so they thought it was the perfect solution to both hold the soil and feed cattle. But kudzu had no so-called “predators,” so it obviously spread everywhere.

So, on the ecological front, there were some problems. But we have to put ourselves in the moment: in the 1930s, we weren’t aware of a lot of those issues as fully as we are now.

It’s funny that you mentioned those three examples, because I feel like those are three things that I can point to, from my twenty-first-century perspective, and say, “Even I, fairly removed from tree planting and kudzu, can see that’s really bad.” But you’re absolutely right—I imagine that at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

Yes. But I also want to talk about the social and cultural missteps.

We’ve already mentioned the fact that it was all male. Again, African Americans were sent to segregated camps, and Native Americans were in a separate program. So, these social issues accompanied many of the ecological problems, creating a program that was incredibly successful through its work but also, if you look a bit deeper, had some drawbacks that I think are important to acknowledge, understand, and avoid in any future programs.

What was the perception of these jobs? Were they generally seen as desirable, or even prestigious? I don’t know if you can answer that question for the entire population of three million people, since everyone’s an individual, of course. But I’m curious what the historical record shows about that perception.

In the beginning, 1,500 of these camps were spread throughout the nation, all near local communities. At first, the local communities were incredibly upset because they thought the enrollees were young, urban boys—hoodlums—and these kids were coming into their towns and trying to dance with their daughters and those sorts of things.

But they soon realized that the federal dollars flowing through these camps and into these local communities were incredibly helpful and substantial. About $5,000 a month per camp flowed to local businesses. So, as soon as that money kicked in, the locals kept an eye on their daughters but allowed the young men to come to town, and the locals supported the corps.

Public perception of the CCC was very positive. Without a doubt, it was the most popular New Deal program. There’s a story I came across in my work, where a boy went home for a visit—when the young men went home, they wore their CCC uniform, which was this olive-green uniform with a tie. While this boy was home, his uniform was stolen.

Oh, it was that prestigious.

The thief wanted to wear it around town and pretend he was a CCC enrollee. I think that says a lot—the action of borrowing a friend’s uniform to make yourself look a little better says a lot about it.

We could approach a conversation about what the history of the CCC might mean today in many different ways. To give one bit of context, President Joe Biden has signaled interest in starting a Civilian Climate Corps as part of his wide-ranging commitment to tackling climate change. There have even been signals that he wants to model this, to some extent, on the CCC’s successes and overcoming some of its challenges. What lessons can the Biden administration keep in mind, given this tremendous history, as it seeks to design a new program for today?

First, I think they should hire a historian to help them do it, and they should call me up, and I would be happy to help them. But more seriously, I think there are maybe three or four ways to think about that.

The most obvious improvement would be to make it accessible to everyone, regardless of gender, age, and race. This is incredibly important, because women and minorities are experiencing higher levels of unemployment and economic insecurity right now than the population at large.

Second, I think the program would need to be more geographically equitable. In the 1930s, the camps were spread out all over the country, but they were in rural areas, such as forests, farmland, and parks. City people did not benefit from the conservation work; urbanites still had to deal with things like pollution, toxic waste, and limited access to outdoor parks. The corps could have helped with those urban issues, so I think a Biden program would need to place those camps in cities and suburbs—not just rural areas.

Third, I think the program would need to be more environmentally just. This would entail identifying local problems, listening to and involving local people, and trying to address those local problems. For instance, I teach in the city of Newark, New Jersey—we could benefit enormously from a corps camp in the city of Newark to help us remediate toxic waste or build community gardens.

Finally, I think a new corps would need to focus on the most pressing problem today, which is climate change. This seems to be what President Biden is pushing. A new corps could help communities adapt to climate change by building climate-resilient infrastructure, like restored wetlands or green stormwater systems. It could also help mitigate climate change by developing solar and wind energy systems. All of this work could help train enrollees today in jobs in the green energy sector, just like the old CCC did for jobs in conservation fields.

Was that something the Roosevelt administration actively made happen—having a role in making these jobs seem prestigious? How did the CCC develop that reputation?

I think “prestigious” might not be the best word, because it wasn’t considered a high-level job. It was more that people felt very positive about these young men working for the country, and the men were doing hard manual labor. They were transforming themselves physically, which Roosevelt and his administration were very public about. People felt good putting these young boys to work in American nature and making American men out of them.

That was part of this story—the young men who came in were often thought of as Polish Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans, and the corps promoted itself as a civic melting pot where, through work in nature, these young hybrid Americans became full-fledged Americans. That was popular at the time. It would be very unpopular today, I think.

There’s a problem with that nice story: African Americans couldn’t transform like that, nor could Native Americans, so it left some people out of the narrative.

How would you characterize the legacy of the CCC? Did it achieve the aims that we talked about at the outset of our discussion?

The legacy is twofold. First of all, the CCC left a legacy with the young men who went through the program. I’ve interviewed maybe a dozen of them, just to get their take on their experiences.

The analogy I keep thinking of is that enrollment was like a college experience. These young men were working-class men; they were not going to college. But this was the first time they were able to leave their families, be independent, be in a group of peers. Many of them traveled far away, because the corps assigned these young men to camps that were distant from their homes, and the corps didn’t want them to be able to walk home when they got homesick. So, many of these young men saw the country for the first time—boys from New York City who were traveling out west to the Rocky Mountains to do work. They think of it with nostalgia.

The other legacy, I think, is the physical landscape that’s been left behind. Any state park you go into today, there’s CCC trails, CCC visitors’ centers, CCC campgrounds. National parks, the same thing. The whole Tennessee Valley is peppered with CCC work. Many of the agricultural fields we see today or rely on for our farms have been affected by that rethinking of soil conservation back in the 1930s.

We could approach a conversation about what the history of the CCC might mean today in many different ways. To give one bit of context, President Joe Biden has signaled interest in starting a Civilian Climate Corps as part of his wide-ranging commitment to tackling climate change. There have even been signals that he wants to model this, to some extent, on the CCC’s successes and overcoming some of its challenges. What lessons can the Biden administration keep in mind, given this tremendous history, as it seeks to design a new program for today?

First, I think they should hire a historian to help them do it, and they should call me up, and I would be happy to help them. But more seriously, I think there are maybe three or four ways to think about that.

The most obvious improvement would be to make it accessible to everyone, regardless of gender, age, and race. This is incredibly important, because women and minorities are experiencing higher levels of unemployment and economic insecurity right now than the population at large.

Second, I think the program would need to be more geographically equitable. In the 1930s, the camps were spread out all over the country, but they were in rural areas, such as forests, farmland, and parks. City people did not benefit from the conservation work; urbanites still had to deal with things like pollution, toxic waste, and limited access to outdoor parks. The corps could have helped with those urban issues, so I think a Biden program would need to place those camps in cities and suburbs—not just rural areas.

Third, I think the program would need to be more environmentally just. This would entail identifying local problems, listening to and involving local people, and trying to address those local problems. For instance, I teach in the city of Newark, New Jersey—we could benefit enormously from a corps camp in the city of Newark to help us remediate toxic waste or build community gardens.

Finally, I think a new corps would need to focus on the most pressing problem today, which is climate change. This seems to be what President Biden is pushing. A new corps could help communities adapt to climate change by building climate-resilient infrastructure, like restored wetlands or green stormwater systems. It could also help mitigate climate change by developing solar and wind energy systems. All of this work could help train enrollees today in jobs in the green energy sector, just like the old CCC did for jobs in conservation fields.

A lot of what you’ve been mentioning, in describing the CCC, is the way that it bonded society together in some interesting ways. I wonder if you feel like that’s possible today?

I feel it’s possible, and I feel it’s absolutely necessary. I feel strongly about that because I hear it from my students. They’d be excited to learn a new skill while feeling connected to the country, to a civic culture that I think is missing in our world right now. But I think it would have to be a bit different.

In the 1930s, there was this belief that that Americanization process was something very positive. Again, I teach in Newark, New Jersey. My campus was, at one point, the most diverse campus in the country. My students don’t want to lose their identity and their culture, but they also long to feel more connected to a shared American culture. I think that, rather than it being an Americanization process, a program like this could allow people of any age to maintain their identity and the cultural connections that are so important to them, but still join together across cultural divides—to feel like they’re working for a common good.

I think that’s so important. We have not had that in a long time.

A version of this article appeared in print in the October 2021 issue of Resources magazine.