75th anniversary of the 'Soil Soldiers'

The country was in the depths of a depression when Franklin D. Roosevelt won election to the White House in 1932. Under pressure to achieve something in his first 100 days in office, he proposed a radical idea: the Conservation Works Administration, modeled on a New York state program he had initiated when governor. He presented his emergency legislation to the 73rd Congress on March 9, 1933. Congress returned a bill to his desk March 31. The first enrollee was signed up April 7.

Connecticut and other states were called on to designate potential camp sites for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and plan work. The Army provided the manpower to oversee the camps. It also provided surplus World War I uniforms for the men to wear on special occasions. For work details, they wore T-shirts and bluejeans. Roosevelt was concerned the men were malnourished, and made sure they were well fed. Most gained several pounds within weeks.

The first camp established in Connecticut was Camp Hook at Squantz Pond State Park near Danbury on May 24, 1933, followed within a week by Camp Graves at Nipmuck State Forest in Stafford Springs Camp Roosevelt at Cockaponset State Forest in Clinton.

Of the state’s 21 camp locations, the one at Kent Falls State Park (organized in 1935) was the only one administered by the state’s Parks Division. Kent Falls State Park and others in Connecticut became popular recreation areas, thanks to the work of the CCC. Gov. M. Jodi Rell officially reopened Kent Falls State Park in July 2006, after completion of a $1.1 million renovation, and noted the original CCC work of the 1930s.

The Northeast States Civilian Conservation Corps Museum is at the former headquarters building of Company 1192, Camp Connor, in Stafford Springs, which was active from 1935 to 1941. By then, young men were entering the service for World War II duty and fewer were enrolling in the CCC.  Camp Lonegran was the last active camp in Connecticut.

The museum is open seasonally and has exhibits on all the camps in the state. Walter Sekula Sr., a CCC veteran and one of the museum’s founders, was recently at the Cornwall Library with historian Marty Podskoch, who is researching the Connecticut camps for a planned book. Sekula said camps also employed LEMs, “Local Experienced Men,� to work with the “Forest Army� in the woods. LEMs taught the young men, ages 18 to 25, how to use shovel and axe.

Men had leisure time, and could visit neighboring towns. Recruits at Company 196 in Sandisfield, Mass., held dances and invited young women from neighboring Great Barrington and Winsted, for example.

By program’s end, some 3,463,766 men (and a few women) had enrolled. They built 125,000 miles of roads and13,100 miles of foot trails, helped control erosion on 40-million acres of land planted upwards of 3- billion trees.