It is 1935.
Five hundred thousand men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five are employed in “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” the nickname given to the Civilian Conservation Corp.
They live in 2,900 military-style camps across the country run by General Douglas MacArthur and staffed by Army Reserve officers.
For doing heavy manual labor on government-owned land they receive $30 per month, with most being sent home to their families.1
It is an intense, life-changing experience.
Here’s a portion of the letter Robert Bassell wrote to his parents from Camp Fremont in Pinedale, Wyoming, where he worked alongside guys from New York, California, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky and Wyoming.
Dear Mother and Dad,
The reason I haven’t written you lately is because I have been on forest fire [duty] and have worked like hell.
On Thursday, July 24, in the afternoon, after a hard day’s work, they got a fire alarm.
I was the first to ask to go.
Seventeen of us rode twenty-eight miles to the bottom of the mountain.
We then hiked nine miles up to the top of the mountain.
It took us four hours.
We got there at eight o’clock; and were dead tired, but we fought the fire until dark, at ten o’clock.
We came back in to the campfire and tried to sleep until the pack train [carrying supplies] came.
Mind you, we hadn’t eaten for thirteen hours.
We tried to sleep one on top of the other by the fire.
The pack train came at twelve midnight and we ate at one in the morning.
We then got a blanket apiece because that is all the three horses could carry up that dangerous climb.
We slept from one until four and then we ate breakfast and then fought fire until one in the afternoon,
when half of us came in to the temporary camp and ate lunch…
The CCC program ran for nine years and three million participated.
They saw new parts of the country, made friends with people they’d never expected to meet, and learned new skills.
Fifty-seven thousand even learned how to read and write.
And when the draft began in 1940, CCC alumni jumped the rank of ‘private’ and were inducted as corporals and sergeants.
This was ‘big government’ at its finest.
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
The equivalent of $728 in today’s dollars.
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