Unsung Heroes of the Tree Army

A decade before the “Greatest Generation” served their country so gallantly in World War II, many of these same young Americans served in “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” planting a lasting legacy and building the foundations of today’s most prized recreational facilities.

When he was a little boy, Arley Jr. was intrigued by the doughboy helmet in his father’s closet. He would plop it on his head, buckle the strap and march around the living room. With the oversized helmet slipping over one eye, Arley marched up to his father’s armchair and asked “Dad, what was it like when you were in the army?” Before Arley Sr. could reply, young Arley marched away, pointing a finger at the lamp and making rat-a-tat-sounds.

In 1933, as part of his New Deal to boost Americans out of desperate poverty provoked by the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The program was a promising strategy to provide meaningful employment for young people ages 18 to 25, left idle by the nation’s deflated economy, while rejuvenating the nation’s forests that had been devoured to satisfy the nation’s hunger for cheap fuel and land for farming and development. Hundreds of thousands of young men, from cities, small towns and country hamlets, enlisted in Roosevelt’s Tree Army to make a better a life for themselves and their families. They boarded trains and buses, and, perhaps for the first time in their lives, traveled far from home to CCC camps where they would live and work for six months or longer.

Altogether, more than 60 CCC camps were established in Ohio between 1933 and 1942. Some were temporary tent cities that were maintained long enough to complete a specific project, while others were permanent communities of barracks where the CCC corps members would provide an ongoing workforce in the area. Many of these permanent camps were built in the hill country of southern and eastern Ohio, and administered through Ohio’s fledgling state forest program.

With only 10 percent of Ohio’s original forest cover remaining by the early 1900s, forest conservation had become a major concern, prompting the creation of a state forest system in 1915. Reforestation efforts were inching along at a slow but steady pace until the CCC burst on the scene, with thousands of enthusiastic young men invigorated by three square meals and a job to do. The crews planted a living legacy of millions of seedlings across the scarred Ohio hillsides; nationwide, the CCC planted a whopping three billion trees between 1933 and 1942. Many of today’s lush and healthy forests literally grew out of the adversity faced by families struggling to survive the lean years of the Great Depression.

That helmet was not an artifact of war, but the uniform of a peaceful endeavor. Little Arley’s dad wore the helmet close to home, not in the distant theaters of Europe or Japan. He wielded a shovel, rather than a firearm, yet Arley’s dad was indeed a soldier, of sorts - in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He was a member of “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” serving in the late 1930s at Camp Adams on the fringe of the Shawnee State Forest and Theodore Roosevelt Game Preserve, which would later become Shawnee State Park.

Although trees served as the emblem for the program, the CCC did much more than replant woodlands. They also built bridges and carved roads through the wilderness to provide better access for fire suppression crews, as well as outdoor enthusiasts. They built dams to create lakes for water supplies and public recreation. They blazed trails and sculpted the landscape to control erosion. In addition to these civil engineering, infrastructure and conservation projects, the CCC crews also built marvelous buildings on public lands.

Ohio’s CCC crews used locally available materials to construct small cabins and rustic lodges, modest offices and concession stands, sturdy picnic shelters and beach houses. These were intended to be functional structures, but the builders more than compensated for the lack of frills with an abundance of care and pride. Today, the remaining CCC buildings are monuments to old-fashioned craftsmanship. They are impressive in their durability, refreshing in their clean lines, and beautiful to look at with their blend of natural stone and solid wood.

Life in the CCC camps was spartan, but often better than the bleak prospects at home. The corps members - many of whom arrived at the camps threadbare and malnourished - were provided with uniforms and plenty of food for youthful appetites stoked by fresh air and hard work. Some of the camps even offered evening classes on a variety of topics, from basic literacy and civics to motor repair, cooking, forestry and soil conservation. The pay was roughly $1 a day, and the hours were consistent with the new national standard work week of five eight-hour days. After a month’s labor, the corps members received $5 to spend, while the government sent the remaining $25 of their earnings home to their families.

For most of the corps members, the CCC experience was more than just a job and a leg up from poverty, it was a great adventure - from the moment they enlisted. Most of the enlistees were assigned to camps in unfamiliar territory, outside their home states. Part of the CCC mission was to build character, as well as strong bodies and an efficient work force. Boarding trains bound for exotic destinations (many young Ohioans rode the rails to camps in the Western U.S.) was an important first step in building the esprit de corps.

Team spirit was equally important, and shone as brightly, among a relatively small but important group of African American enlistees who stayed closer to home. Young men of color in the CCC, like Arley Owens, Sr., were assigned to segregated camps within their home states, like Ohio’s Camp Adams. The accommodations at Camp Adams were austere - the barracks buildings were drafty and chilly with their tar paper roofs and potbellied stoves, and meals were prepared outdoors over a fire - but Arley and his colleagues didn’t complain. Here he could eat his fill of warm and nourishing bean soup and corn bread fresh from the kettle and Dutch oven, whereas the folks back home in Van Wert were still scraping together meager meals of yesterday’s biscuits flavored with bacon grease. Arley counted his blessings as he donned his uniform and doughboy helmet, ready to trek the lovely rolling hills of Scioto County, planting trees and building the future.

In Ohio and around the country, the CCC formula fashioned boys into men - learning new skills, developing a work ethic, practicing citizenship and social values, and grooming leaders. For Arley and the crew at Camp Adams, as well as their fellow Ohioans laboring in the plains, mountains and forests of the West, the program also instilled direction, purpose, and hope.

From 1933 until 1942, when the U.S. became involved in World War II, an estimated three million young Americans, including about 126,000 Ohioans, served in the CCC. As the nation’s struggles shifted from domestic suffering to international turmoil, Roosevelt’s Tree Army was disbanded and the CCC camps were abandoned or utilized for new purposes.

The value that the original CCC brought to America and to our state parks has transcended place and time. Certainly the value of the forests, lush once again with majestic 70-year-old trees, just keeps increasing. The wonderful old stone and timber shelterhouses peppered through our state and national parks have become the very image that comes to mind when folks think of a park. The noble social and education foundations of the CCC have also built a wealth of human capital that has spanned generations.

No doubt, the CCC groomed great leaders, talented resource managers and fine citizens. The very first chief of the Ohio State Parks system, Victor Flickinger, was a CCC alumnus. In 1933, as a recent college graduate with a degree in landscape architecture, Flickinger was hired as a landscape foreman with the CCC in Iowa. For six years, he helped design and oversee conservation projects in Iowa’s state parks. When the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and its Division of Parks and Recreation was created in 1949, Victor Flickinger was a natural choice to provide direction and leadership for our own budding park system.

His father’s CCC service inspired current Ohio State Parks Chief Dan West to pursue his career in resource conservation. Like many of today’s natural resources professionals, Dan West inherited his love of the outdoors and conservation ethic from his father, Marion West, who served in the CCC as a young man. Initially, Marion’s 1939 journey from his home in Springfield to the wilds of Washington and Oregon appealed to the 18-year-old’s sense of adventure. Ultimately, his experiences as a CCC corps member honed his sense of duty. Like many of his contemporaries of the “Greatest Generation,” Marion West joined the Army and continued to serve his country in World War II after his stint in the CCC.

Arley Owens Sr.’s experience in the CCC transformed a poor boy with limited prospects into a confident entrepreneur. After completing his CCC service, Arley Sr. took the skills he gained, from carpentry and engine repair to nurturing plants and cooking for a crowd, and created his own thriving landscaping business. A generation later, his son, Arley Jr., embarked on his own career with the ODNR Division of Civilian Conservation, the heir to the original CCC.

In addition to the CCC of the 1930s, other New Deal programs helped build the resource base that would eventually become today’s state parks. Through the Land Utilization Program of the Resettlement Administration, marginally performing family farms in the hardscrabble landscape of southeast Ohio were purchased by the federal government, and the farming families were relocated. State parks and surrounding state forests were created from 40,000 acres of these lands, including Tar Hollow State Park and State Forest, Lake Hope State Park and adjacent Zaleski State Forest, and Blue Rock State Park and State Forest. Improvements, including building roads and creating recreational lakes, were made by the Works Progress Administration, which offered jobs to a broad scope of unemployed men and women in a variety of disciplines, from public works projects like the CCC was performing, to education, art and theater.

Today, we owe a debt of gratitude to those legions of young Americans who signed up for New Deal programs, grateful for the opportunity to make a few dollars. With the sweat of their brow, they shaped our state parks. By serving as the hands and feet of our nation’s first conservation movement, they shaped the very fabric of our society. By helping to pull themselves and their families out of poverty, they have made us all richer than they may ever know.

- Jean Backs, Editor

Resources

• King, Charles C., Editor, A Legacy of Stewardship, The Ohio Department of Natural Resources 1949-1989, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 1990
  On-line Resources
• African Americans in the CCC, www.newdeal.feri.org, the New Deal Network, (excerpts from The CCC and Colored Youth, Civilian Conservation Corps, Washington, D.C., U.S. government Printing Offices, 1941)
• Civilian Conservation Corps, www.ohiohistorycentral.com, the Ohio Historical Society.
• Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) 1933-1941, www.u-s-history.com.
• Roosevelt’s Tree Army, A Brief History of the Civilian Conservation Corps,
  www.cccalumni.org, National Association of CCC Alumni.
• Speakman, Joseph M., Into the Woods: The First Year of the Civilian Conservation Corps, www.archives.gov, “Prologue” Vol. 38 No. 3, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Fall 2006.