CCC Company 850

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about CCC Company 850, out near Mesquite. Now picture this: the Great Depression has settled over the country like a long, heavy summer. Folks are struggling, land is hurting, and somewhere in Dallas County, a farmer named Hicks Jobson makes a decision.

He sets aside eight acres of his own farm, just carves them right out and says, here, use them. And what comes out of that generosity is something worth remembering. In June of 1935, Company 850 of the Civilian Conservation Corps opens its doors (or rather, its barracks doors) about a quarter mile east of Mesquite.

Two hundred and fifty young men come rolling in as enrollees. And the camp they find waiting on them is no bare-bones outfit. Twenty-four barracks.

A mess hall. A health facility, a bath house, a recreation hall. You put 250 men to work and you've got to keep them fed, rested, and in one piece.

Now, the CCC was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal work relief programs, and Company 850 had a mission: soil conservation. Under something called Project SCS-36-T, those men went out into Dallas and the surrounding counties and worked with more than 300 farmers across over 40,000 acres.

Forty thousand acres. They terraced the land, put up fencing, built check dams and levees along the east fork of the Trinity River; all of it aimed at holding the earth together when the earth seemed determined to blow away or wash off. They kept at it until 1941.

Six years of work that touched the land in ways you can still trace if you know where to look. And when it was all said and done, the camp land (those eight acres Hicks Jobson had set aside) was donated to Mesquite ISD. A farmer gave the land, young men shaped the county with their hands, and in the end, it passed on to the schoolchildren.

That's not a bad arc for eight acres during the hardest of times.

What the marker says

During the Great Depression, Hicks Jobson set aside eight acres of his farm to allow the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal work relief programs, to establish a local camp. Located 1/4 mile east of Mesquite, Company 850 welcomed 250 enrollees in June 1935. The site included 24 barracks, a mess hall, health facility, bath house and recreation hall. Under Project SCS-36-T, the men worked on soil conservation and engaged more than 300 farmers in Dallas and surrounding counties on over 40,000 acres until 1941. Work included terracing, fencing, check dams and levees along the east fork of the Trinity River. The camp land was later donated to Mesquite ISD.