Almost a century ago, thousands of young men began arriving in New Hampshire to live for months or years in cabins they built themselves while doing strenuous work in the wild, including cutting state Route 118 through the woods, helping create Bear Brook State Park, and repairing the Old Man of the Mountain.
Even though we still reap the benefits today, most of us have no idea they were here.
Filling that hole in our memories is the main goal of a new self-published book, “Corps of Granite,” about the dozens of Civilian Conservation Corps camps that operated in New Hampshire from 1933 to the early 1940s. The CCC was a program to help unemployed men between ages 18 and 29 (no women were allowed) during the Great Depression, one of several sweeping federal programs in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to overcome the nation’s economic stagnation.
The men – more than a million overall in some 1,400 camps throughout the country – fought forest fires, planted trees, created roads, built wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries, as well as bridges and campground facilities. Many of the nation’s federal and state parks were virtually created by them.
“It’s a partly forgotten history. The physical structures, the camps that they set up, pretty well disappeared … and the people are all gone,” said Robert Averill, co-author “Corps of Granite.”
But the work they accomplished remains.
“It was something. You’ve got these guys coming from all kinds of places … the social stratification, the experience of learning how to cut wood, run machinery, build roads, do blasting,” said Kris Pastoriza of Easton, the other co-author. “Who could make that happen now? For something like that to happen today it would have to be desperation – and maybe they were desperate then.”
Each worker received $30 per month in addition to room and board at a work camp – and was required to send at least $22 home to support their families. Education was often provided; by one estimate, 57,000 illiterate men learned to read and write in CCC camps.
“Corps of Granite” isn’t a traditional history told in chronological form, but is instead a collection of memories, including photos and sketches, selected from the relatively few sources that exist about CCC camps in New Hampshire.
“It is a bit of a patchwork book. That’s not unintentional,” said Averill.
Snippets include Diary of a Rookie, memories of former CCC workers gathered decades ago, and contemporary photos of CCC camp remnants that can be found in the woods.
These show that the camps were lively, a sort of mix between a military base, Boy Scout summer camp, jamboree and work site. Boxing matches, plays, and even dances were common for off-hours.
Averill is a Massachusetts resident who attended Dartmouth College a half-century ago and became enamored with the area around Mt. Moosilauke. He and Pastoriza, who lives just north of Moosilauke, are in the midst of publishing a 13-volume set focusing on that 4,800-foot mountain. “Corps of Granite” is a bit of a departure for them, although about one-third concerns the Wildwood CCC Camp, the first built in New Hampshire and one of three that existed around Mt. Moosilauke. “This should have broader appeal,” Averill said, although he added that it, like the other Moosilauke books, won’t pave the road to riches. “It’s a retirement book. I paid for it myself,” he said.
One group of readers who might already have a sense of CCC history are Bear Brook visitors since the park has one of the few CCC camps still standing. The park’s CCC Museum, guarded by a statue of an impressively buff CCC camper, has a ton of artifacts showing how the men lived and worked as they built the bathhouse at Catamount Pond, Broken Boulder Trail and Spruce Pond Camp, which the Student Conservation Association now calls home. Residents can rent restored CCC cabins at Bear Hill Pond camp.
The books are also available online through Bondcliff Books and the Mountain Wanderer and at some bookstores around the state. To find out more, check moosilaukebooks.com/