Steam Shovels and Picnic Shelters: Photographs of CCC Camps in Massachusetts

Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conversation Corps in 1933. Men enrolled in the CCC helped build state and national parks, managed forest resources, and fought tree and plant disease. CCC camps, where men enrolled in the Corps lived and worked, sprung up throughout the United States. In Massachusetts, an average of 28 camps per year operated between 1933 and 1942.

The Civilian Conservation Corps in Massachusetts Photograph Collection at the University of Massachusetts documents one of Roosevelt's most popular programs through photographs. This collection provides a detailed visual record of CCC camps in Massachusetts. These images help us understand what daily life in the camps was like and the kind of work that men who lived there accomplished.

Archivists know very little about the origins of this collection, which was donated in 1987. There is no information that reveals how or why the donor collected these images, who the photographers were, or why the pictures were taken in the first place. Researchers have only the short, sometimes cryptic, captions on the back of the photographs to help them understand what these pictures mean.

The photographs include unexpected information. Based on the majority of the images, a viewer might conclude that no women or African American men participated in the CCC. Yet an African-American man shoveled dirt beside white companions at Harold Parker State Forest. Women appear in one photo from October Mountain, and a caption for another image from Myles Standish is signed “Peg.”

Captions for some groups of images hint at a story that a photographer was trying to tell a story. A pair of images from the camp on Martha's Vineyard suggest it may have been important to record “progress” in camp layout, from temporary tents to more permanent structures. Similarly, the series, “Road Building in Three Scenes” begs the question: why does the presence of a touring car mark the completion of a road through a forest?

Finding aid for the CCC Collection