Were You in the Job Corps at Acadia National Park? 1966-1969

Be a Citizen Historian: Do you have knowledge of the Job Corps at Acadia from 1966 to 1969 (as a corpsman, park staff, or community member)? Would you like to share that knowledge? Acadia National Park is engaged in a research study to learn more about and document the Acadia Job Corps Conservation Center that was located in the park from 1966-1969. As part of the project, we are looking to speak to any individuals who were former Acadia Job Corps members or members of the local community. If interested, please contact us to share your information.

Job Corps began as a Civil Rights era social program under Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” initiative. The program was patterned after the depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the 1930s. Job Corps was initiated in a few select parks with the goal of providing “a hand up, rather than a hand-out” to an underemployed, urban workforce from African American and other communities of color during the 1960s. Unlike the CCC, Job Corps was racially integrated and included the goal of providing education and vocational skills.

One hundred and twenty men entered the program at Acadia in 1966; the majority of whom came from urban areas mostly on the east coast and the south, with a small group coming from the U.S Virgin Islands. This study will document the work of the Job Corps at Acadia National Park as well as the experiences of the men enrolled in the program who moved from the city to an isolated, rural area in Maine to gain education, training, and to work in a national park.

Other National Park System sites such as Catoctin Mountain, Oconaluftee at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park also historically hosted Job Corps. It is still a national program though now administered by the United States Department of Labor. It continues to offer free-of-charge education and vocational training to young men and women ages 16 to 24.