Gentleman forester Franklin D. Roosevelt instigated the Civilian Conservation Corps as a remedy for rampant unemployment during the Great Depression

Franklin D. Roosevelt was an avid amateur woodskeeper. He applied science to his plantations of Norway spruce, white cedar, yellow, white and red pine, Douglas fir and black walnut at his Hyde Park, N.Y., estate.

His interest in the woods was nationally convenient when the country went into a severe economic depression following the crash of the stock market. In March 1933, Roosevelt proposed Emergency Conservation Work legislation that within months would create the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Recruits from impoverished families erected tent cities at state forests throughout New England and New York state. Woods roads, picnic areas, hiking and ski trails, beaches, dams, fire ponds — the work of the CCC men is reminder of the work ethic of that generation of young men, and of a once alert, caring and smart government.

Roosevelt had long itched to try out new things—and did so as he acquired his own acreage, separate from his parents’ estate, beginning with the 194-acre Bennett farm.

The National Park Service has reacquired 899 of FDR’s once 1,600-acre holdings in Hyde Park, most recently, in March 2007, 334 acres held by Scenic Hudson Land Trust that connected FDR’s Route 9 estate with Eleanor Roosevelt’s Val-Kill and the remote Top Cottage on Route 9G in Hyde Park. Through this land snakes a woods road that FDR had allowed his neighbor, Thomas Newbold, to build as a shortcut to his own holdings, explained Ranger Kevin Oldenburg during one of the first public hikes under NPS auspices in September 2007.

FDR often drove his hand-control Ford convertible over the woods road with the Scottie dog Fala at his side.

“If you see FDR’s Ford [in the presidential library], you will see all the dings and scratches� from his frequent woods runs, Ranger Oldenburg told us. “The drives gave FDR much-needed freedom and mobility. There are 20 miles of roads on the property.�

Professor Nelson Courtlandt Brown of New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University brought professionalism to FDR’s tree farm. Brown guided plantings from 1929 until after FDR died in 1945.     

Roosevelt through the CCC and other agencies directed the planting of the strip of trees from the Canadian border to Texas to deter another destructive dust bowl erosion. He sanctioned a demonstration farm in Wisconsin, to show proper contour plowing and ravine control. The list is enormous.

Historian Neil M. Maher in an ambitious overview of the CCC and its relationship to the American environmental movement, “Nature’s New Deal� (2007), said the CCC program emerged from the president’s keen awareness of how spent American forests and fields were. FDR was an ardent Progressive conservationist—as opposed to John Muir and others, who were preservationists—and had a pragmatic interest in improving forest stock for economic and social as well as environmental reasons.

Roosevelt was no stranger to the region; he thoroughly enjoyed motor trips to Silver Mountain in Millerton.