Governor Rell Promotes Plan for CT Conservation Corps

to Put People to Work and Tackle Environmental Projects

Tours CCC Museum at Shenipsit State Forest

                Governor M. Jodi Rell today toured the site of a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the 1930s to highlight her proposal to put people to work through a modern-day Connecticut Conservation Corps.

            “In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps and put thousands of young men to work on environmental conservation projects all across this nation.   In the troubled times we now face, we can take a page from history and establish the Connecticut Conservation Corps,” Governor Rell said during her visit to the CCC museum at Shenipsit State Forest.

            Governor Rell said by providing much-needed jobs and paychecks for Connecticut citizens, her proposal will build on the legacy of the young men whose labor changed the face of our nation and state.

“In return we can tackle important environmental conservation projects, starting with our own state parks, state forests and beaches,” said the Governor, who noted that her father was a CCC member in North Carolina.

In her budget address to the General Assembly February 4, Governor Rell proposed $7.5 million in funding to establish the Connecticut Conservation Corps.  The Governor asked the legislature to help her craft a formal and final plan to put this program in place by July 1. The new work force would not come at the expense of Department of Environmental Protection park and forest staff because the Governor’s budget does not call for cuts in that area. The program could also be expanded to include weatherization projects.

“We recognize that there are many ‘I’s’ to dot and ‘T’s’ to cross to turn my vision for a conservation corps into a reality,” the Governor said, “However, I am confident that we can create a program that will offer a decent wage for honest work and one that will make a real difference for our state and for our people.  The Connecticut Conservation Corps is a practical, humane and common sense response to the national recession, much like the President Roosevelt’s ‘Tree Army’ was during the Great Depression.”

CCC Museum at Shenipsit State Forest

The Civilian Conservation Corps – Company 192 – was based within Shenipsit State Forest from 1935-1941.  It was named Camp Connor, in recognition of General Fox Connor, who was the CCC commandant for much of the Northeast.

The building that now houses the CCC museum is the only remaining camp barracks building in Connecticut.  It was originally used as an officer’s barracks and office.  It houses a collection of CCC tools, photographs and memorabilia

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Among projects undertaken by the young men from Camp Connor were construction of the road that runs to the top of Soapstone Mountain and creation of the unique Mountain Laurel Sanctuary in Nipmuck State Forest. The campers also helped local towns with clean-up after the flood of 1936 and the hurricane of 1938.    

CCC in Connecticut

            There were 22 CC camps in Connecticut, with about 200 to 250 young men living at each of them, throughout the 1930s and early 1940s.  Participants went to work in what were then largely undeveloped state parks. 

They built trails, roads, fire towers and picnic shelters and planted trees and in many parks.  Some of the specific projects were building dams that created swimming areas at Chatfield Hollow State Park, Killingworth and Pachaug State Forest, Voluntown; clearing the recreation area for Squantz Pond, New Fairfield; improvements to Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison; and the construction of the forest rangers’ homes at Shenipsit, Chatfield Hollow, Pachaug and Tunxis state parks.

CCC Across the Nation

The CCC was established by President Roosevelt shortly after he took office.  Nicknamed Roosevelt’s “Tree Army,” the CCC created work at a time when jobs where scarce and to helped complete environmental conservation projects in an era when soil erosion and deforestation had ravaged much of the nation’s landscape. 

Almost 3.5 million young men were enrolled in the CCC from 1933 until 1942, when it was disbanded as manpower needs for World War II grew.

Young men ages 17 to 21, as well as veterans of the Spanish American War and World War I, were eligible to serve.  They signed up for six-month stints and lived in military style camps run by military officers.  They were paid $1 a day and required to send $25 of their pay back home to their families every month.