Construction

Construction began in the summer of 1933, supervised by the National Park Service.  Working from south to north, enrollees removed vegetation and began digging diversion channels to clear space for the first lagoon and dam.  At first, the CCC men worked by hand, using only picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows.  With all the mud and peat, progress was very slow.  But in 1934, the National Park Service brought in heavy equipment including bulldozers, backhoes, tractors, graders, and dump trucks.  This not only made the work faster, but offered vocational training opportunities for the enrollees who operated and maintained the equipment.

Workers dug out seven lagoon basins about five feet deep, along with connecting channels.  Crews used the millions of cubic yards of soil excavated to form six-foot-high dikes along the east and west sides of the project.  Enrollees also constructed four concrete dams to regulate the flow of water within the lagoons.  After the men reshaped the landscape, they planted thousands of native trees, bushes, and other plants.  Workers sowed the plants in a way that they hoped would appear to be a naturally occurring landscape.  Although planners believed that the project would be done in two years, the transformation of the marsh into the Skokie Lagoons took nine years to complete.