Furman University

The History of the Blue Ridge Parkway

Each October the brilliant leaves in the mountains entice several million people to the Blue Ridge Parkway. That scenic roadway was built some seventy years ago by agencies of the federal government. Among the armies of workers on the massive project were thousands of young men employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

The CCC was one of the most successful of the many New Deal programs intended to address the crisis of the Great Depression. No other economic slump had been so deep, so long, or so painful. In 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as president, one out of every four Americans was unemployed, and in many large cities nearly half of the adults were out of work. Some 500,000 people had lost their homes or farms because they could not make their mortgage payments. Thousands of banks had failed; millions of depositors lost their life's savings.

Among the new president's top priorities were the creation of jobs for the unemployed and the conservation of the nation's natural resources. On March 31, 1933, just four weeks after his inauguration, Roosevelt signed into law the Emergency Conservation Work program, soon known as the CCC. Its mission was to recruit single, unemployed men between the ages of 18 and 25 (later revised to 17 and 28) and put them to work creating or improving national, state, and local parks and forests. The recruits were paid $30 a month, $25 of which was sent home to their families. (In today's dollars that $30 a month would be about $340.)

The U.S. Army operated the hundreds of CCC camps scattered across the country, mostly in state and national parks and forests. Recruits were given a physical exam, inoculated, issued uniforms, given physical training, and then trucked to the camps where they lived amid a military regimen. Awakened at 6 a.m., they worked 8 hours a day under the supervision of foresters, engineers, and architects. On Saturdays they worked until noon. 
The CCC workers built roads, trails, bridges, beaches, campgrounds, picnic shelters, fences, and dams, fought fires, improved streams, installed water, electrical, and telephone lines, restored historic sites, and planted millions of trees.

But the CCC provided much more than fulfilling work for jobless young men suffering from starvation and want. President Roosevelt emphasized that "the moral and spiritual value of such work" would be more important than the labor itself. His concept of the CCC was holistic. In addition to jobs, the CCC gave disadvantaged teens technical training and social experiences that enabled them to become productive citizens. In the evenings the recruits could take classes to learn to read or to earn their high school diploma or certificates for specialized skills. The camps also organized athletic teams and musical ensembles. In addition, the young men learned about personal sanitation and hygiene-and first aid. Three meals a day helped the recruits gain an average of fifteen pounds after their first month in camp.

The CCC experience helped the workers develop greater self-confidence and self-discipline. George A. Moody recalled that his year in the CCC "showed me a lot of rights and wrongs, it grew me up, grew a bit faster than I would have grown otherwise. It kept me out of trouble, chances are. It showed me how to gain responsibility, get out and fend for myself in a proper way."

By the summer of 1935 there were 502,000 young men living in 2,600 CCC camps. A public opinion poll conducted in 1936 revealed that the CCC was the most popular New Deal program. When asked, "Are you in favor of the CCC camps?" 82 percent of the respondents said "yes," including 92 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of Republicans.

In 1935 the Civilian Conservation Corps was asked to help construct the 469-mile-long Blue Ridge Parkway linking the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. (The Skyline Drive in Virginia, another CCC project, was already underway.) Four CCC camps, each housing about 200 men, were developed along the parkway route in North Carolina and Virginia. While private construction companies did most of the specialized work on the parkway, the CCC recruits focused on landscape planting and constructing the recreation areas and trails.

For all of its success, the CCC was dismantled early in 1942 because the nation's young men were needed for the war. Although short-lived, the Civilian Conservation Corps left many lasting achievements, not the least of which is the Blue Ridge Parkway, the most visited park in the nation-especially in October.