CCC Camps
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took over as President in March 1933, the country was in the midst of the worst depression ever experienced in the United States. Among the organizations established to help relieve the situation was the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was designed to simultaneously solve two of the major problems facing the county: financial relief and help to implement conservation projects.
The state was treated quite well be the CCC due to the great availability of projects, and for most of the life of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Utah had between thirty and thirty-five camps at any given time. Based on its population, Utah generally had a higher percentage of its manpower quota employed than did most of its neighbors. There were 16,872 junior enrollees from Utah, 746 Indian enrollees, and 4,456 supervisory personnel. In all, there were 22. 074 Utah men who were provided employment by the CCC during the nine-year period, plus an additional 23,833 individuals from out of state who worked on projects in Utah. The work of the CCC was varied. The corpsmen build trails, (*WillardPeak Road,) phone lines, campground improvements, fences, bridges, cabins, and low-standard roads; they build check and silt dams for flood control and the curbing of erosion; they dug out poisonous larkspur and other noxious weeds and instituted insect and rodent control. Several of the Forest Service’s CCC camps began many of the loop roads through the canyons of the Wasatch Range. In addition to these jobs at which they regularly worked. the CCC force constituted a 5,500 man fire brigade, units of which could be mobilized any time for forest fire suppression.
Near Mantua, the CCC began terracing overlooking Willard and Boutiful in addition to the acres of land that had been replanted, terraced, or reseeded; and in addition to the fire-suppression and rescue-work that had been carried out by CCC crews, their presence brought direct financial benefits to the state. Enrollees received wages of thirty dollars monthly, of which twenty-five dollars was sent home to their families, while the young men were allowed the remaining five dollars to spend on themselves through the month. More than $125,000 a month thus was pumped into the state’s economy through the wages of the Utah enrollees and LEMs alone. Community leaders and CCC officials estimated that a community would benefit financially by $50,000 to $60,000 every year a camp was in the vicinity. Utah merchants profited from government contracts for lumber, equipment, and foodstuffs. The Federal Security Agency estimated that by the time active operations came to a halt in the summer of 1942, the CCC had spent $52,756,183.00 in the state, and Utah ranked seventh in the nation in the CCC expenditures per capita.
