Published: September 25, 2009 11:28 am      

Honoring a Legacy

TPWD creates Web site to pay tribute to CCC parks

In the 1930s men needed work.

Part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was to spend government money to put people back to work, and one of those programs was through the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Formed in 1933, the CCC was designed to aid relief of the unemployment resulting from the Great Depression while implementing a general natural resource conservation program on national, state, county and municipal lands.

Many CCC camps across Texas worked to build many of the state’s state parks.

One such park is nearby in Houston County, Mission Tejas State Park.

Mission Tejas State Park Interpreter John Tatum said the workers didn’t get much by today’s standards, but back then the money went a long way.

“They got $30 a month plus three hots and a cot,” Tatum said, referring to three hot meals and a place to sleep. “They got to keep $5 of that at the end of the month, and the rest was sent home to their families.”

The standards to be part of the CCC were minimal. Tatum said members had to have at least one serviceable tooth and had to be able to walk without assistance with most of the workers between the ages of 17 and 23. Also, the men had to meet certain size restrictions as they were uniformed with World War I surplus uniforms.

It wasn’t easy work.

With nothing but a shovel and a wheelbarrow a group of men would build a lake. Throw in a rake and they could build a road, give them an ax and they could transform the land.

“The boys had to do things the hard way,” Tatum said of the CCC workers who built the park. “They had a conveyor belt of men moving dirt with shovels and a wheelbarrow.

“That was their job. There wasn’t a lot of other work around to be had at that time.”

Many of the projects the CCC worked on were for local and state governments. Tatum said the federal government would give money to states and municipalities to organize CCC camps. Then those entities would find qualifying projects and use the money to put men to work.

CCC Camp 888 was tasked with building Mission Tejas State Park with work beginning in 1934 on a 116-acre tract of land.

To say the working conditions were primitive were an understatement.

When work first began at the park there was no well and the men got inventive on how to keep clean in hot conditions.

“Before the boys got the well in they didn’t have a place to bathe,” Tatum said of the workers. “So, they looked all around the place and they found a spring on the side of a hill. They lined the spring with rocks, dug a pit down below it and lined it with rocks and dug another pit below that one and lined it with rocks.

“As the water ran down the hill it filled up the pits. The boys would bathe in the lower pit and move up to the pit above it to rinse off.

“The water was about 52 degrees, but after a day of doing the kind of work they did — you didn’t care.”

Work at Mission Tejas lasted until 1935.

The CCC program lasted until 1942 when the country was forced to change its priorities to the war effort.

To commemorate the work the CCCs did for Texas state parks, Texas Parks & Wildlife Department has built a Web site devoted to the architectural legacy left by the CCCs.

CCC workers laid the groundwork for more than 50 parks across the state, with 29 operated by TPWD.

According to TPWD, the new Web site contains historical information for all 29 CCC-built state parks in Texas operated by TPWD. Visitors can view archival CCC photos, vintage postcards, photographs of CCC artifacts, architectural drawings, and oral history videos. The site is divided into three sections: The interactive program, park profiles and archives.

The Web site has information and interactive programs depicting what life was like in the camp and the site also details the work done by the CCC companies along with much more.

To visit the Web site go to http://texascccparks.org