The Emery County Historical Society met in the Old Emery County Court House on Castle Dale’s Main Street to learn the history of the CCC or Civilian Conservation Corp in Emery County from historian Edward Geary.
President Lori Ann Larsen welcomed everyone and introduced the entertainment. Two children Chyanna and Sam Bingham entertained the group briefly with two songs one of which was “Happy Birthday” to Lori Anne Larsen and the other was “Why I Am In The CCC” by Charlie McGraw.
Susanne Anderson Archive Director of the Emery County Archives reported the availability of scholarship grants from South Korea. The Samsung grant of $40,000 from South Korea is for relatives of Americans that fought in their war against the North Koreans. Last year $130,000 in grants was issued to American students. The counselors at Emery High School have more information about this grant.
President Lori Anne Larsen introduced Edward Geary by displaying two of the many books that Edward has written. One of his books is “The History of Emery County” available at the Historical Society and other places in the county. Edward Geary was raised in Emery County and attended North Emery High School, Carbon College, Brigham Young University and received a scholarship from Stanford. He has a lot of knowledge about Emery County history.
A Beneficial Invasion: The Civilian Conservation Corp in Emery County 1933-1942. By Edward Geary.
Edward Geary began by saying that he was indebted to Dottie Grimes and the other Archive Directors of the Emery County Archives for the photos and information that he is presenting. They were a great help in finding photographs, cataloging them and making the photos and historical information available. He pointed out that Evelyn Huntsman was a great help in finding information about the Ferron CCC Camp.
President Roosevelt announced on his fireside chat radio program that we are going to have a Civilian Conservation Corp. Originally it was called the Conservation Service and was organized similarly to military units.
You need to understand the circumstances of the United States at that period in time to appreciate the Civilian Conservation Corp. The country was suffering from a severe depression and drought. The unemployment in Utah in 1934 was over 35 percent and locally it was higher. Most people who had jobs had either reduced hours or pay cuts. Compared to the depression in 2008 we got close to 15 percent unemployment.
The prices for farm products fell by 40 percent from 1929 to 1934. In 1934 the prices for farm products got so low there was simply no market. The sheep growers in Emery County had to sheer their sheep but there was no market for the wool. Montell Seely’s father rented some box cars to store his wool for more than year until the market went up a little so he could sell his wool. Then he was not able to sell the wool for the cost of the sheep sheering.
The ranges were dry and in very bad condition because of the severe droughts from 1931 to 1934. The government would not let the farmers put any but the youngest animals on the range. The government agreed to buy the farmers older animals for killing. For the sheep they paid 50 cents a head, for cows it was $10. You had to go along with this in order to have access to any government support program. The bureaucrats decided that the problem was an oversupply of farm products. The real problem was under demand. No one could afford to buy the products produced. The government decided that if they destroyed a large number of cows the market would come back up.
There was a record drought in 1931 and again in 1934. In 1934 less than 10 percent of the land in Emery County had a harvest. In 1934 the dry conditions led to a severe forest fire in Huntington Canyon that burned for several weeks.
Coal production in Utah dropped from 4.6 million tons in 1930 to 2.1 million tons in 1934. Four out of 10 Emery County families were on public assistance. The county budget was cut by one third from 1929 and 1931. There were subsequent cuts after that. The school budget was cut by a quarter from 1932 to 1934. As late as 1938 the assessed value of Emery County was 24 percent lower than it had been in 1930.
These difficult conditions existed in a society where there was no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no unemployment insurance, no workmen’s compensation, no health insurance and no insurance on bank accounts.
Those who had been thrifty by putting their money in the bank ended up losing all of their savings.
Conditions were bad everywhere and when President Roosevelt won the election in 1932 he began his administration by promising the New Deal. Looking back in history, a lot of the New Deal programs were actually had been initiated by Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover was not an inspiring conservative. He was careful about expanding government too much.
When Roosevelt came into office he began to fireside chats on the radio and he would say those things that people wanted to hear. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
The people did not have any more food in their pantry but their spirits were lifted. He was willing to try anything.
Edward Geary said that when he grew up, Emery County was 2/3rds Democrat. Some of you younger people wont believe that this ever happened.
Many people said that President Roosevelt got us out of the depression. Really that is not so. World War II got us out of the depression. Economic growth didn’t start until the start of the war in 1939. President Roosevelt got us through the depression by keeping peoples spirits up and by finding ways to get money to the people. There are a lot of New Deal programs, this courthouse is one of them. The administration provided about half of the money to build the courthouse which has since been expanded. There were many other New Deal programs. They called it the New Deal Alphabet Soup.
The Public Works Program focused on roads. In 1929 before the depression highway 10 had been paved as far as Huntington. Then in 1934 they got Highway 10 to Castle Dale, then in 1938 to Ferron and 1941 the Highway 10 was extended to Emery. Then in 1940 Highway 29 was paved to Orangeville.
Some of the other programs were as follows: The Civil Works Administration worked with local governments, for the men there was work on local streets and sidewalks, water and sewer systems; for the women they were put to work painting school buildings or preparing hot lunches.
Works Progress Administration: had sewing projects for women and forest projects for men.
Federal Relief Administration: supplied food and clothing.
Federal Recovery Administration: was responsible for connecting the spring in Huntington Canyon to the Huntington water system and modernized other water systems in the county.
Production Works Administration; manual arts buildings at high schools and the Emery County Court House.
These jobs went to people that did not have work. They didn’t pay very much, about 25 cents an hour, but people were lining up to have the jobs. The Government had to put on a limit. An unemployed person could have six weeks of work and then someone else took over the job.
The most remarkable program of all is The Civilian Conservation Corps in Emery County from 1933 to 1942. This turned out to be a very beneficial invasion for Emery County.
There were no jobs for anyone and the young had absolutely no employment. On city streets there were hundreds of idle young men with nothing to do but get into trouble. One of the first things Roosevelt wanted to do was put those young men to work.
He was also aware that our natural resources were in bad shape. Utah had forests, but if you looked at them from Sanpete County you could tell how many sheep herds were on the mountains by counting the dust clouds. Forest Rangers had nothing to feed their horses so they had to take feed with them when they went on the mountains. The valley ranges until 1934 were completely unregulated. If you had sheep or cows you could put them on any land where no one else claimed the range.
In 1934, the Taylor Grazing Act was passed. That was a forerunner of the Bureau of Land Management. Congressman Colton from Vernal Utah was the one that got this legislation to become law. The Utah land was being overgrazed or plowed up not just here but throughout the central states. In Iowa there stands a cone 18 feet high. The top of which illustrates where the topsoil once was before farmers started plowing up the land. This cone illustrates how the top soil was eroded down decade by decade. That soil all ended up in the Gulf of Mexico. The farmers plowed up the prairie grasses. They planted grain and they did not bother to contour the land. They planted in straight rows and when it rained the water took the soil off the land in the form of run off. Now the land is contoured to catch the rain water sediment. Those were some of the conservation projects.
Young men were brought into the CCC and offered the opportunity to help themselves with some income. The CCC boys learned some military style discipline and helped the country by improving the natural resources. When the CCC was organized it paid one dollar a day 30 dollars a month of that the young man enrolled got five dollars. The rest of it went home to help support his family. They had to have families on relief to be eligible. Most of these young men had never had five dollars in their pocket. For ten cents you could buy a hamburger and with a dollar you could get to the Willberg resort dance on Saturday night.
In addition to the CCC enrollees, each camp had local experienced men to provide job site supervision.
The CCC boys were first housed in a camp of tents. Later they constructed their own wood framed barracks buildings for more permanent housing.
On May 29, 1933 the Company 959 was organized as a spike camp and sent to Joe’s Valley where they spent the summer in a tent camp. Initially, almost all of the enrollees in Company 959 were Utah residents.
The normal camp size was 200 men in four barracks buildings, with officer quarters, mess hall, kitchen, shower room, infirmary, recreation hall with a library, plus utility buildings.
In the state of Utah the CCC camps held about 46,000 enrollees and employees divided about equally between in-state and out-of-state.
Initially Company 959 was mostly made up of enrollees from Utah with 1/4 to 1/3 from Emery County.
Bishop Taylor of the Orangeville LDS Ward conducted Sunday evening services at the camp. He brought a chorus of young women, which did wonders for attendance.
Company 959 spent the next two winters in Mount Pleasant and the summers of 1934 and 1935 in Gooseberry and Boulger working on reservoirs and forest campgrounds. For several weeks in 1934 they fought the Huntington canyon forest fire.
In the fall of 1935 Company 959 moved into permanent quarters in Ferron where they remained until 1939. The major projects in that area were constructing the canyon road, fish ponds, flood control structures, ranger stations and campgrounds. There was a tent camp established near the picnic area in the lower part of the canyon and near Ferron Reservoir.
This mostly Utah enrollment of Company 959 made for a relatively smooth integration into the Ferron community. Some of those CCC bonds lasted for a lifetime for many of the enrollees and for decades they continued to have reunions working on service projects for Ferron City. Many of the girls in Ferron married a CCC boy. Several times while the boys were camped at Joes Valley a few of them walked from there to Ferron to see their girlfriends.
During October 1935 Company 529 moved into a permanent camp at Castle Dale. Unlike the Ferron company which worked for the Forest Service, Company 529 was assigned to the Division of Grazing which later evolved into the Bureau of Land Management.
Most of the enrollees of Company 529 came from East of the Mississippi River. It would appear that these CCC’s did not become as much a part of local community as did those located in Ferron.
For the next three years, Company 529 worked in the desert. Their major projects were constructing the road from Castle Dale to the San Rafael River and constructing the Swinging Bridge. In addition to building the road, they built livestock corrals, dams for stock ponds, and made other improvements for the grazing industry. For those projects far from Castle Dale the Company 529 worked out of a tent camp near the spring in Pine Canyon, which is the south fork of Calf Canyon.
The dedication of the Swinging Bridge took place in April of 1937. This was an event that attracted over 2,000 people. Drivers of all the vehicles that came formed a line to drive across the new bridge. This bridge gave access to a vast region of Emery County.
The Green River Cutoff Road from Buckhorn Flat to US Highway 50/6 was largely the work of CCC Company 3556 based in Green River. Note: Edward Geary was kind enough to give a list of the CCC boys that were in Company 3556 to the Emery County Progress along with his notes.
In 1938, Company 529 moved to a new camp in Willow Springs south of Emery. From this base they continued to work on road and grazing improvements in the southern part of Emery County.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was brought to an end in 1942. The nation at that time were diverting all of its resources into the war against the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific.
The most important contribution of the CCC was the preparation of a national defense force. The millions of CCC boys that had been well fed, organized and well trained through their conservation service could quickly be turned into an effective army.
Historical Society learns about the Civilian Conservation Corp.
CCC