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Civilian Conservation Corps

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps across the nation provided employment and vocational training for thousands of young men from 1933 to 1943. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the establishment of such an organization just two days after his inauguration on March 4, 1933. Roosevelt hoped to put up to 500,000 unemployed young men to work in forests, parks, and range lands. The first enrollee entered the program on April 7. By the end of 1933 the CCC was well established with 275,000 men in camps across the United States and in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.



The U.S. government provided recreation, as well as food, clothing, and shelter for the enrollees in camps run by the War Department. Some CCC camps published newspapers for at least part of their existence. The Tecumseh Scout of August 4, 1936, put out by CCC Company 763, included reports of leisure activity at the Tecumseh, Nebraska, camp in the summer of 1936.



A horseshoe tournament was scheduled for the week of August 24, open to anyone in the camp. “The contest will be played on the courts located in back of the first platoon barracks. The canteen will award one carton of cigarettes to the winner of the singles and two cartons to the winners of the doubles.” A volleyball court was being constructed and an organized intra-barracks tournament was planned. Bee keepers among the corps members were reported to have nine hives.



Astronomers within the Tecumseh group during the last weeks of July had been “watching the progress of Peltier’s comet as it moved through the evening sky. With the astronomy class as a nucleus a group of enrollees located the comet in the eastern sky July 22nd and followed its path from evening to evening of the following week. The comet was the first one for the majority of the group and proved to be a rare spectacle in the heavens.”



The column concluded with the news that the War Department would send a number of magazines to each camp for the coming year. Included were such diverse titles as Saturday Evening PostArgosyCosmopolitanJudgeReader’s DigestTrue Detective Mystery, and Popular Mechanics. Elsewhere in the paper it was announced that the Scout would cease with the August 4 issue and that camp news would continue in the Tecumseh Chieftain.

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Other Publications

The Bachelors’ Protective Union of Kearney

When the Bachelors' Protective Union gave a gala reception for two of its newly married, former members and their brides in March of 1890, the social club for young, ...

U.S. Weather Bureau in 1890s Nebraska

The U.S. Weather Bureau was established by an act of Congress on October 1, 1890. It took over the weather service that had been established in the office of the Chief ...

Canning the Way to Victory

During American participation in World War I the U.S. Food Administration, under the direction of Herbert Hoover, launched a massive campaign to persuade Americans to ...

The Shoemaker’s Ashes

"Edward Kuehl, one of the most peculiar characters that ever lived in Omaha, or anywhere else, was found dead in his bed last night in the back room of his place of ...

Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger Foreward

Red Dog, an Oglala Lakota who lived at the Red Cloud Agency, Nebraska, 1876-77 (Nebraska State Historical Society RG2955.ph).   In the summer of 1876, following the ...

Darryl F. Zanuck

Darryl F. Zanuck Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-1979), a native Nebraskan, produced some of Hollywood's most important and controversial films. He helped found 20th Century Fox ...

The Burlington’s Profitable Pork Special

Nebraska railroads were much concerned with developing an adequate economy in the areas they served. The Burlington, for example, had a long history of caring for the ...

Bungalow Filling Stations

After the giant Standard Oil Company was broken into thirty-four separate companies in 1911, the newly independent Standard Oil of Nebraska dominated the state's market ...

The Bull Fight

This is the perfect time of year for a visit to the old fishin' hole. But a group of fisherfolk from Plainview discovered that this bucolic pastime sometimes has ...

Buffalo Soldiers West

African-American soldiers on the western frontier are the focus of an exhibit at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln. Buffalo Soldiers West, on loan from the Colorado ...

Protection for Buffalo

The extermination of the buffalo on the Plains occurred largely between 1870 and 1885. The Nebraska State Journal of Lincoln on February 1, 1874, editorialized in vain ...

Buffalo Hunting

In late October 1877 young Rolf Johnson and three friends left their homes in Phelps County, Nebraska, for a buffalo hunt in northeastern Colorado. The hunt was not very ...
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