Abandoned CCC Camp: Upper Peninsula, Michigan
Traveling thru the Upper Peninsula, most of us have seen the signs mentioning “CCC Camps”. What are/were they? Civilian Conservation Corps camps, a creation of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.
Their purpose was to recruit men to work on state land to help preserve our natural resources and find ways to prevent forest fires, pests, floods, disease, and erosion. According to Roosevelt, "we can take a vast army of the unemployed out into healthful surroundings (and) eliminate to some extent at least the threat that enforced idleness brings to spiritual and moral stability."
The country's first CCC camp opened in Virginia on April 17, 1933.
The average Michigan CCC members were males between 17-23 years old, out of work, citizens, and not a student. They could not be below five feet tall, should be able to do physical labor, and not weigh under 107 pounds...and they must be healthy, with no known diseases.
Other factors:
COULD NOT BE OVER SIX FOOT SIX
NO VARICOSE VEINS
NO VD
COULD NOT HAVE MORE THAN TWO TEETH MISSING
It was almost like being in the regular army. According to michigan.gov, a member received “a toilet kit, a towel, a mess kit, a steel cot, a cotton mattress, bedding, (and) a round metal disk with his service number.”
Michigan's first CCC camp opened on May 2, 1933, in the Hiawatha National Forest and called 'Camp Raco'. From 1933 until 1942, there were a total of 841 CCC camps in the country, with 128 of them in Michigan. Now they sit deserted in the Michigan wilderness, reminders of what once was.
Thanks to TheRustyman, the gallery below shows a few remains of one of those camps, hidden in the Upper Peninsula forest...
Abandoned CCC Camp, Upper Peninsula
MORE MICHIGAN CAMPS: