By Tom Hintgen

Otter Tail County Correspondent

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), established by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression in the 1930s, was a public works program. Young men joined up all across the United States, including those who worked as part of the CCC at Itasca State Park.

A display at the visitors center in Itasca State Park, 20 miles north of Park Rapids, includes the story of young men at CCC camps who worked on projects for conservation and the enjoyment by park visitors.

The young men constructed cabins, campgrounds, picnic grounds, swimming beaches and hiking trails. They also planted trees and worked on landscaping that enhanced Itasca State Park.

Crews of 225 young men lived in CCC camps and worked under the supervision of the State Forest Service, today known as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Federal agencies provided the CCC workers with food, shelter and clothing. The lion’s share of their pay was sent home to their families.

President Roosevelt’s CCC program ran from 1933 through 1942, during the first full year of U.S. participation in World War II.  A similar program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) ran from 1935 to 1943. WPA workers constructed parks, roads, bridges, museums and other structures.

This writer, while staying with family members over the years in sturdy CCC-built and WPA-built Bear Paw cabins in the Itasca Park woods, has fully appreciated being in Minnesota’s oldest state park, established in 1891.