The world was without hope for many of Colorado's young men in 1933. Youth unemployment was 25 percent and another 29 percent were working only part-time. Many quit school before graduation to work odd jobs to support their families. Others took to hitching rides on railroad cars desperate for a new opportunity. Even young men who finished their schooling were without work as they had no job experience or training. Then, in 1933, with the beginning of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) young men could go to work in Colorado's national parks, state parks, national forests and other public lands. They no longer worried where their next meal would come from. Now they could learn new job skills. In Colorado CCC boys planted trees, erected fences and telephone lines and put out forest fires. Today we still use the roads and trails they built. CCC work was made to last. At the program's end in 1942 over 30,000 Colorado men served at over one hundred twenty camps. And work was completed in nearly every county in the state. Robert W. "Bob" Audretsch retired as a National Park Service ranger at Grand Canyon in 2009 after nearly 20 years of service. Since then, he has devoted himself full time to research and writing about the Civilian Conservations Corps (CCC). Bob grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Wayne State University where he received a BA in history and a MS in library science. Prior to his work as a ranger, he was a librarian in Michigan, Ohio, and Colorado. Bob has a lifelong interest in history, nature, books, and art and has written numerous publications in the fields of library science, sports, and history. Bob is the author of Grand Canyon's Phantom Ranch (Arcadia Publishing, 2012), Shaping the Park and Saving the Boys: The Civilian Conservation Corps at Grand Canyon, 1933-1942 (Dog Ear Publishing, 2011), We Still Walk in Their Footprint: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Northern Arizona, 1933-1942 (Dog Ear Publishing, 2013), Selected Grand Canyon Area Hiking Routes, Including the Little Colorado River and Great Thumb (Dog Ear Publishing, June, 2014) and, with Sharon Hunt, The Civilian Conservation Corps in Arizona (Images of America) (Arcadia Publishing). He resides in Lakewood, Colorado.

BETWEEN 1933 and 1942, nearly 200,000 young African-Americans participated in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's most successful New Deal agencies. In an effort to correct the lack of historical attention paid to the African-American contribution to the CCC, Olen Cole, Jr., examines their participation in the Corps as well as its impact on them. Though federal legislation establishing the CCC held that no bias of "race, color, or creed" was to be tolerated, Cole demonstrates that the very presence of African-Americans in the CCC, as well as the placement of the segregated CCC work camps in predominantly white California communities, became significant sources of controversy. Cole assesses community resistance to all-black camps, as well as the conditions of the state park camps, national forest camps, and national park camps where African-American work companies in California were stationed. He also evaluates the educational and recreational experiences of African-American CCC participants, their efforts to combat racism, and their contributions to the protection and maintenance of California's national forests and parks. Perhaps most important, Cole's use of oral histories gives voice to individual experiences: former Corps members discuss the benefits of employment, vocational training, and character development as well as their experiences of community reaction to all-black CCC camps. An important and much neglected chapter in American history, Cole's study should interest students of New Deal politics, state and national park history, and the African-American experience in the twentieth century.

The Civilian Conservation Corps in Alabama traces in great detail the work projects, the camp living conditions, the daily lives of the enrollees, the administration and management challenges, and the lasting effects of this Neal Deal program in Alabama.

How the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed, rejuvenated, and protected American forests and parks at the height of the Great Depression. Propelled by the unprecedented poverty of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established an array of massive public works programs designed to provide direct relief to America’s poor and unemployed. The New Deal’s most tangible legacy may be the Civilian Conservation Corps’s network of parks, national forests, scenic roadways, and picnic shelters that still mark the country’s landscape. CCC enrollees, most of them unmarried young men, lived in camps run by the Army and worked hard for wages (most of which they had to send home to their families) to preserve America’s natural treasures. In The New Deal’s Forest Army, Benjamin F. Alexander chronicles how the corps came about, the process applicants went through to get in, and what jobs they actually did. He also explains how the camps and the work sites were run, how enrollees spent their leisure time, and how World War II brought the CCC to its end. Connecting the story of the CCC with the Roosevelt administration’s larger initiatives, Alexander describes how FDR’s policies constituted a mixed blessing for African Americans who, even while singled out for harsh treatment, benefited enough from the New Deal to become an increasingly strong part of the electorate behind the Democratic Party. The CCC was the only large-scale employment program whose existence FDR foreshadowed in speeches during the 1932 campaign—and the dearest to his heart throughout the decade that it lasted. Alexander reveals how the work itself left a lasting imprint on the country’s terrain as the enrollees planted trees, fought forest fires, landscaped public parks, restored historic battlegrounds, and constructed dams and terraces to prevent floods. A uniquely detailed exploration of life in the CCC, The New Deal’s Forest Army compellingly demonstrates how one New Deal program changed America and gave birth to both contemporary forestry and the modern environmental movement.

"Audretsch has given us insight into the scope of CCC work which otherwise might have lain dormant." He "has produced a meticulously referenced and detailed compilation of history of the seven CCC companies which served, 1933-1942, at the South Rim, North Rim, and Phantom Ranch to develop Grand Canyon National Park." ---Kathy Mays Smith Author, Gold Medal CCC Company 1538: A Documentary 2009 Recepient of the CCC Legacy President's Meritorious Service Award "Shaping the Park and Saving the Boys succeeds in large part because it strikes a good balance between what is old - the broader history of the CCC as a New Deal Program - and what is new - those tantalizing, heretofore unknown or forgotten details of day-to-day Civilian Conservation Corps work at Grand Canyon. Casual readers will enjoy the book both as a primer on the New Deal's most popular program, and as a snapshot of CCC life at Grand Canyon, while researchers will find themselves returning to its pages again and again for useful nuggets in the text as well as within the footnotes." --- Michael I. Smith, CCC Historian, Past Board Member CCC Legacy THE GREAT DEPRESSION was undoubtedly the nation's greatest crisis since the Civil War. Unemployment in the United States reached 25%. Many young men, without work experience or adequate schooling, were without hope. Then, on March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as president. In the sometimes-frenetic First Hundred Days of his administration, the president and Congress passed landmark legislation to return the nation to prosperity. One of those legislative milestones was the Civilian Conservation Corps program. The goals of the CCC program were twofold: revive the wasted young men and damaged natural resources. Over a nine-year-period, 1933-1942, nearly three million young men carried on conservation work in national parks, state parks, national forests, and other public lands. One of the greatest beneficiaries of the CCC was Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park. From 1933 to 1942, the park's infrastructure advanced as much as fifty years with the installation of trails, buildings, trail resthouses, roads, telephone lines, and many other improvements. Many of these enhancements benefit today's park users. Robert W. "Bob" Audretsch retired as a National Park Service ranger at Grand Canyon in 2009 after nearly 20 years of service. Since then, he has devoted himself full time to research and writing about the Civilian Conservations Corps. Bob holds degrees in history and library science from Wayne State University. He resides in Flagstaff, Arizona.

From Palo Duro Canyon in the Panhandle to Lake Corpus Christi on the coast, from Balmorhea in far West Texas to Caddo Lake near the Louisiana border, the state parks of Texas are home not only to breathtaking natural beauty, but also to historic buildings and other structures built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the 1930s. In Texas State Parks and the CCC: The Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Cynthia Brandimarte has mined the organization’s archives, as well as those of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Texas Department of Transportation, to compile a rich visual record of how this New Deal program left an indelible stamp on many of the parks we still enjoy today. Some fifty thousand men were enrolled in the CCC in Texas. Between 1933 and 1942, they constructed trails, cabins, concession buildings, bathhouses, dance pavilions, a hotel, and a motor court. Before they arrived, the state’s parklands consisted of fourteen parks on about 800 acres, but by the end of World War II, CCC workers had helped create a system of forty-eight parks on almost 60,000 acres throughout Texas. Accompanied by many never-published images that reveal all aspects of the CCC in Texas, from architectural plans to camp life, Texas State Parks and the CCC covers the formation and development of the CCC and its design philosophy; the building of the parks and the daily experiences of the workers; the completion and management of the parks in the first decades after the war; and the ongoing process of maintaining and preserving the iconic structures that define the rustic, handcrafted look of the CCC. With a call for greater appreciation of these historical resources, especially in light of the recent Bastrop fire, which threatened one of the state’s most popular CCC-era destinations, Brandimarte profiles twenty-nine parks, providing a descriptive history of each and information on its CCC company, the dates of CCC activity, and the CCC-built structures still existing within the park.

“Informative, inspiring.” —Kirkus Reviews In an inspiring middle grade nonfiction work, P. O’Connell Pearson tells the story of the Civilian Conservation Corps—one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal projects that helped save a generation of Americans. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the United States was on the brink of economic collapse and environmental disaster. Thirty-four days later, the first of over three million impoverished young men was building parks and reclaiming the nation’s forests and farmlands. The Civilian Conservation Corps—FDR’s favorite program and “miracle of inter-agency cooperation”—resulted in the building and/or improvement of hundreds of state and national parks, the restoration of nearly 120 million acre of land, and the planting of some three billion trees—more than half of all the trees ever planted in the United States. Fighting for the Forest tells the story of the Civilian Conservation Corp through a close look at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia (the CCC’s first project) and through the personal stories and work of young men around the nation who came of age and changed their country for the better working in Roosevelt’s Tree Army.

Phantom Ranch is nestled in the Grand Canyon basin on the Colorado River--a location hardly visible from the rim and only accessible after a journey through scores of geologic layers. The only way there is by river rafting, hiking, or mule, and with each foot of the journey, the traveler descends 30,000 years in geologic time. While at Phantom Ranch, the view looking above is of 1.7 billion years of geology, all swirling together in an alphabet of colors. Grand Canyon's Phantom Ranch is the story of the rustic buildings designed by architect Mary Jane Colter in 1921, of the park's first peoples, river rafters, the early trail and bridge builders, and dramatic flash floods. When travelers leave Phantom Ranch, they are never the same. For some of them, departing is as if they have just said good-bye to an old friend.