Civilian Conservation Corps: FDR's Tree Army, 3 Billion Trees and $25 Home

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In the spring of 1933, with a quarter of the workforce unemployed, Franklin D. Roosevelt scaled up a program he had tested as governor of New York through the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He proposed the Civilian Conservation Corps on March 21, Congress approved it by voice vote on March 31, he created it by executive order on April 5, and the first camp opened in Virginia by mid-April. Four departments ran it: Labor recruited, the War Department ran the camps, and Agriculture and Interior directed the work. To calm AFL head William Green, Roosevelt named machinists' union official Robert Fechner director and promised only unskilled labor. Enrollees were unmarried, unemployed male citizens aged 18 to 25, about 70 percent of them malnourished, paid $30 a month with $25 sent home to their families.

Douglas MacArthur and George C. Marshall oversaw camp logistics with no military training allowed, yet the officers gained experience in mass mobilization later used in World War II. Over nine years about three million men planted three billion trees, built trails, bridges and fire towers, and fought the Dust Bowl with contour plowing and check dams. By 1935 political pressure forced full segregation, Fechner refused Black supervisors for Black camps, and Chicano youth were given menial tasks and punished for speaking Spanish. The 1940 draft drained the labor pool, Congress ended funding after Pearl Harbor, and the program disbanded in 1942, its camps later holding conscientious objectors, POWs and Japanese Americans.

• After the Bonus Army march, Roosevelt opened separate camps for veterans of any age, and Eleanor Roosevelt championed the She She She camps for women.
• In one northern region, timber losses fell from over a billion board feet to 80 million.
• The program had an 82 percent public approval rating in 1936.
• About 15,000 Native Americans served in the CCC Indian Division, living with their families and training as mechanics, radio operators and surveyors under John Collier.
• The model inspired the Student Conservation Association, the California Conservation Corps, AmeriCorps and the American Climate Corps.