“C” is for Civilian Conservation Corps. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps [CCC] was a New Deal federal initiative that put millions of unemployed men to work on conservation projects. The program represented an unprecedented effort to combine social welfare with conservation on public and private lands. Working with state and federal agencies, the CCC developed seventeen state parks—including Oconee, Table Rock and Paris Mountain—and national forest recreation areas. The Civilian Conservation Corps’ most important legacy in South Carolina was the role it played in the transformation of the state’s rural landscape. It began the process of land restoration by building hundreds of miles of terraces and planting more than fifty-six million trees. The state’s extensive forests of today can be traced to the pioneering conservation efforts and the visionary planning of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
“C” is for Civilian Conservation Corps
