Transcribed from Morrow County Chronicles
Morrow County Historical Society
1987, Vol. VI
CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS
CCC
Camps were created March 31, 1933. They employed young men in their late teens and early twenties. From 1933 to 1942, over three million men were involved in the programs of forestry, planting millions of trees, construction of look-out towers, thousands of miles of telephone lines, roads, trails, fighting forest fires, new parks, upgrading existing parks and campgrounds, developing springs, building dams, and building fence.
About 200 men from New England were located at the Fairgrounds in Heppner and other spike camps. The reaction was generally good and a crew did succeed in draining Ditch Creek into Willow Creek.
The Army was responsible for running the camp, providing food, and care of the boys. The boys were turned over to the technical service, in this case the Soil Conservation Service, from 8 to 5 for five days a week.,
Other agencies such as the Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of land Management, etc. also had camps working on their projects. The job of the Soil Conservation was to write the agreements between the landowners and the S.C.S., out-lining the projects on which the boys could be used.
The camp was closed in the fall of 1941. The boys were all shipped home*. The Army and the S.C.S. were left to move out trucks and equipment. They were moved to Walla Walla (Washington). Some of the buildings were used as a bivouac stop over for Air Force personnel from the Pendleton Air Base in training.
This continued through out the war years.
Tom Wilson, who was head of the S.C.S. during the time of the CCC in Heppner, says that the day they were moving some of the equipment to Walla Walla, they had stopped for lunch on the way and while they were eating, it came over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
*Many settled here after the war.
Marian Brosnan
(submitted for Morrow Co. US Gen Web by Berniece Thornton)