Between 1933 and 1942, more than 4 million men served in the CCC. They worked at 4,500 camps located in every state and territory, and built and developed most of the infrastructure we're still using in our state and national parks.
It's estimated they planted 3 billion trees, improved 3,500 beaches, built more than 46,000 bridges and countless park buildings and pavilions.
It was a brilliant idea and one of the best things to come out of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Young men from cities and farms gathered together to work hard, earn desperately needed money for their families and learn what life was about.
At a time when more than 50,000 Vermonters were out of work and the state's manufacturing economy was a shambles, the CCC was an attractive option. If you were single, between the ages of 18 and 25, physically fit and unemployed, you were eligible to join. Most earned $30 a month, with $25 sent back home to families.
And these men certainly worked hard. It's amazing to consider the engineering feats the CCC boys accomplished without bulldozers, dump trucks and chain saws.
In Vermont, the CCC boys built the Waterbury Dam almost entirely by hand. With 600 wheelbarrows, picks, shovels and drills, they used 308,000 cubic feet of dirt, 84,000 cubic feet of rock fill, 200 cubic yards of concrete and
Then-state forester Perry H. Merrill, the man considered the father of Vermont's state park system, worked closely with the Roosevelt administration to get as much money as possible pumped into the 90 Vermont CCC projects he directed.
Under Merrill's oversight, the nearly 41,000 men in Vermont's 30 CCC camps built stone and timber lodges and cut roads and ski trails on Mount Mansfield, Mount Ascutney and Burke Mountain. They built 105 miles of forest roads, improved 38,083 acres of forest, constructed nearly 120,000 square yards of parking areas and overlooks and created 12 new state parks.
The total nationwide cost for the CCC at the time was about $2 billion. The return on that investment was considerable. Many of the men who served in the CCC later fought in World War II, and the discipline and skills they learned in the camps were easily transferred to military service.
One can argue that the CCC was the first step in creating what's become known as "The Greatest Generation," the people that survived the Depression and global war to build the most powerful economic and military force the world had ever seen.
The longer-term legacy of the CCC is all around us. It was the precursor of the land management and conservation efforts we see today. The public service organizations such as AmeriCorps and the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps all owe a considerable debt to the original CCC boys.
Today, the CCC would be a tough sell. People don't see the government as the solution to our problems anymore, as they did during the New Deal. Coming up with the billions of dollars that would be needed to support the construction and conservation work the original CCC boys did is a political impossibility. And the spartan life of the CCC camps is unimaginable to today's coddled and pampered youth.
But we think it is an idea worth pursuing. The surviving CCC boys are in their 80s and 90s now, but ask any of them about their experiences, and they'll tell you that it was the high point of their lives. There is plenty of work to be done and plenty of youth who would benefit, as their grandfathers did, from the discipline and hard work that were hallmarks of the CCC.
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