[guitar music]
(Ranger) In the 1930s the United States faced very difficult and challenging times. The
[wind rustling]
The Great Depression was ravaging the nation unemployment reached 25% and the Dust
Bowl was rendering once fertile farmland unproductive and uninhabitable. Poverty
and the lack of jobs took its toll on the American people. The crisis also
directly impacted America's national parks including Wind Cave National Park
[wind rustling continues]
The park was created in 1903 and had never been adequately funded as the
years rolled by conditions worsened as evident by this 1928 report written by
landscape architect Thomas Vint,
(Male Voice) The buildings at the park headquarters
compose about the most perfect haywire outfit we have in the park system. They
are a disgrace to the United States government and the National Park Service.
[wind rustling continues]
(Ranger) Surprisingly, it was in the midst of the Great Depression that help arrived.
[wind subsides, cheerful banjo begins]
Starting in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal began
offering hope for the nation including provisions to create the Civilian
Conservation Corps.
[cheerful banjo continues]
Also known as the CCC, this program employed young unmarried
men and provided them with training, room and board, and a small financial stipend.
One of the primary goals of the ccc was to improve our public lands. On July 9th
1934, the CCC came to Wind Cave National Park. Camp Wind Cave employed 240 men and
set them to work on a variety of projects. Over the next eight years the
CCC boys as they were known repaired and improved cave tour trails, laid concrete
steps, installed a new cave lighting system, and surveyed cave tour routes.
Above ground, they planted trees, improved roads and parking areas, and
constructed buildings such as the elevator building and visitor center.
However, the CCC was not all work. For example, the Wind Cave quartet was a
popular local singing group and some enrollees played on a baseball team
which won the South Dakota state championship in 1935 and 36. In the
evening, crew members took classes and learned
skills they would use throughout their lifetimes. As former enrollee Fred
Rothenburger later said,
(Male Voice) I'll always be thankful that I had a chance to come to
the CC camp. I learned a lot of things I otherwise would not have had the
opportunity to learn. On my own thinking, I wish these sort of programs would have
continued because I see a lot of need for young people who would benefit from
the lifestyle of the CCC camp.
(Ranger) When world war II broke out, the United
States shifted its resources to military efforts and drafted young men as
soldiers.
[cheerful banjo ends]
In 1942, the CCC program ended and camp wind cave closed
[reflective guitar music starts]
But the CCC boys had left their mark on public lands nationwide. Here, in eight
short years, they completely overhauled Wind Cave National Park creating an
infrastructure that is still used to showcase the cave and the Prairie world
above it. Reminders of their work are many their legacy includes buildings
such as the visitor center, an elevator building, the concrete stairs in the cave,
and the trees which landscape the headquarters area. The CCC was a program
that benefited individuals transformed the areas where they were and helped a
country in a time of crisis. Many of the improvements they made still stand as
silent monuments to the quality, perseverance, and role the CCC played in
our nation's history. Wind Cave National Park was forever changed by these young
men who laid the foundation for the park we enjoy today.
[cheerful banjo returns and plays out]