The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a program established by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) and his
New Deal program in 1933. The New Deal was a series of governmentsponsored projects aimed at providing relief to citizens during the Great
Depression (1929–41). The Great Depression was a time of slow economic growth and high unemployment. The Civilian Conservation Corps
hired young men for projects aimed at conserving the nation’s resources.
The CCC was part of the Hundred Days Legislation that President
Roosevelt signed when he first took office in 1933. The CCC was among
the most accepted of his programs, because it proved so successful. First
called Emergency Conservation Work, the program fell under the guidance of a national director and involved four federal departments. The
Department of Labor worked to select men for the program. The
Department of War administered the work camps through a U.S. Army
officer in command. Organization and supervision of each project fell to
the departments of Agriculture and the Interior. Projects included building park facilities, planting trees, cleaning reservoirs, building dams, and
fighting forest fires.
The CCC employed only unmarried men between the ages of 17
and 25. They lived at camps run by the Army and were provided with
clothing and food. They earned $30 per month, though $25 of it was
sent home directly to their families. Minority men were included in the
program, but discriminatory practices often limited the number that the
CCC actually employed.
At the peak of the program in 1935, the CCC employed about five
hundred thousand men in more than twenty-five hundred camps nationwide. Over two and a half million men found employment through
the CCC during the course of the program. Congress voted to end the
program in 1942 as the demands of World War II created employment
opportunities for men in factories and the armed forces. The program was highly successful, but the CCC was no longer necessary to help save
a failing economy.