Lufkin CCC Camp

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. Back in 1933, the country was flat on its back. The Great Depression had wrung the life out of work, out of wages, out of hope for a whole generation of young men who had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

So President Franklin Roosevelt, and an Act of Congress, created something called the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC. And if you think that sounds like a simple jobs program, well, you keep listening.

Right here, near this very site, the Lufkin CCC Camp opened its gates in 1933. The Texas Forest Service administered it, and young men came to work. Not to sit around, not to wait out the hard times.

To work. They built roads. They built bridges.

They strung telephone lines through country that had never heard a wire hum before. And they planted trees, row after row after row, out here in East Texas where the land needed it. That camp ran right through 1942, nearly a decade of young hands and straight backs and early mornings.

And here is where the story gets bigger than just a paycheck. The Lufkin CCC Camp didn't only put food on tables and pull families back from the edge. It helped revive the East Texas forest industry itself, through what the marker calls progressive forestry techniques.

That is something. A Depression-era camp of young men, out in the piney woods, not just surviving the hard times but helping East Texas grow its way through them. Literally.

What the marker says

Created by President Franklin Roosevelt and approved by an Act of Congress in 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) provided youth employment programs during the Great Depression. The Lufkin CCC Camp, located near this site from 1933 until 1942, was administered by the Texas Forest Service. Young men helped to build roads and bridges, string telephone lines, and plant trees. The Lufkin CCC Camp proved to be instrumental in relieving unemployment but also helped revive the East Texas forest industry through its use of progressive forestry techniques. (1984)