I knew Baldridge’s excellent work through his original 1970 dissertation. As a contracting archaeologist in Utah, I recorded and photographed a number of CCC-constructed structures in the state. As part of my research, I would regularly pull out Baldridge’s dissertation to refer to what he may have written about a particular camp or project. However, this was not a widely available resource. With the publication of this book, that has changed.
The book is well structured, clearly listing tables and figures, and has a useful, detailed index. Its appendices present good information concerning the camps’ locations and duration (or at least such information can be inferred from the tables). The maps give an adequate sense of where each camp was located. However, a larger, pull-out map with some additional detail would have enhanced the information.
Shortly after taking office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the CCC and signed a bill passed by Congress that established it. It became one of the most popular and successful of the New Deal agencies. It surely helped with the unemployment situation during the depths of the Depression, especially for young people, but it also supplied much-needed labor for a wide variety of federal and state agency projects. In Utah, as in much of the country, virtually every federal land management agency benefited from the corps. Baldridge’s book provides an excellent introduction to the subject, and always with an eye to how it all played out in Utah.
One of the most interesting aspects of the CCC that the author points out is how popular and enduring the legacy of the agency has been. It lasted only nine years, yet the memory endures; as he states, “It isn’t just the bridges, campgrounds, stock trails, and emergency work done by the CCC that have provided ways for the nation and the state of Utah to recall the tremendous impact” of the corps. “Organizations have been created to perpetuate its legacy; signs have been erected to identify the location of CCC camps and projects, and many corps groups have been set up to carry on the actual work carried out by the enrollees in the 1930s” (359).
The book furnishes information about operations within the CCC, describing each federal and state agency’s particular project needs, who the corps workers were, and where they came from. Those men who were accepted
As was the case throughout the nation, life was hard in Utah during the 1930s. Joblessness was prevalent, wages were low, and most people just tried to get by. The creation of the CCC and allied New Deal agencies lent a much-needed
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Writing a history of a short-lived agency program, especially one as unique as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), is no small feat. Kenneth Baldridge has done this. His original work on the subject was a doctoral dissertation in history at Brigham Young University. He carried out his research in the late 1960s, when many of the CCC participants were still alive, giving us up-close insights into the lives of some of these men.
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Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019. xvi + 508 pp. Paper, $34.95
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By Kenneth W. Baldridge
into the corps in Utah often came from other states, sometimes from as far as the East Coast. Baldridge includes chapters on the type of projects the CCC carried out and what camp life was like for participants. Of particular interest, he details the Utah camps, when and where they operated, and with which agencies they were affiliated. Baldridge also chronicles the types of projects undertaken by particular agencies and the specific camps where that work was carried out. While not all projects are listed (that would be a quite daunting task), he gives many examples and lays out, in general, the types of projects and locations that the CCC worked on for each agency. In my own previous research, I often had a hard time finding this information and was forced to depend on other available sources, such as surviving camp newsletters.
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The Civilian Conservation Corps in Utah: Remembering Nine Years of Achievement, 1933–1942
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