The CCC

Since the late 1920s, the Forest Preserve District had plans in place to transform the Skokie Marsh into a park with a series of lagoons that would offer recreation and flood control. But with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, Cook County lacked the funds to move the project forward. Fortunately, the project caught the attention of the new Roosevelt administration.

President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 amid the worst economic crisis in the nation’s history. FDR set to work immediately, creating the agencies and reforms of the New Deal that he hoped would pull the nation out of the Great Depression. One of the first agencies that he established was the Civilian Conservation Corps, signed into law less than a month into his presidency.

“I propose to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work, not interfering with normal employment, and confining itself to forestry, the prevention
of soil erosion, flood control and similar projects. I call your attention to the fact that this
type of work is of definite, practical value, not only through the prevention of great present financial loss, but also as a means of creating future national wealth.”
- FDR Message to Congress, 21 March 1933

Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes (third from right), oversaw much of the work of the CCC. Ickes also lived east of the Skokie Marsh in Winnetka. His familiarity with and interest in the project likely helped it gain support in Washington.

Inspired by his experiences with Progressive Era conservation in upstate New York, as well as his involvement with the Boy Scouts, FDR conceived of the CCC to provide jobs and to complete much-needed conservation work. The CCC would employ young men between the ages of 18 and 25 in work that would improve not only the land, but also the bodies and minds of the workers, as FDR put it, by “tak[ing] a vast army of these unemployed out into healthful surroundings.” Most of the work would be done on government-owned land and supervised by the Department of Interior or the Forest Service. CCC enrollees worked on a variety of projects on public lands throughout the nation, including fighting forest fires, building roads and trails, improving recreational facilities, planting trees, and completing erosion and flood control projects. More than 2.5 million men would serve in the CCC during its nearly ten years of operation.