In July of 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps started work at Camp Mohican. Housed at the newly established camp five miles southwest of Loudonville, members of CCC Company 1570 worked on a State Forest project that in time would restore the land to what it might have looked like before settlement and farming. CCC historian, Cyrus Moore, will join the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum to discuss the impact of the CCC in America and in Mohican.

The Civilian Conservation Corps began with the Emergency Conservation Work Act passed in March of 1933, as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Through the program, young unemployed men between the ages of 17 and 25 were employed in projects to conserve natural resources and reverse the effects of over-farming and industrial farming that were degrading land and soil. After a massive mobilization under direction of the US Army, the CCC enrollees set to work under the direction of the US Park Service and Corps of Engineers. Their many and widely varied projects included tree planting, water management, road building, and constructing park infrastructure. Though the program wound down and eventually ended during World War II, its legacy lives on through a multitude of public buildings in parks, vast forests of trees planted, and material culture left by the hundreds of thousands of young men who served.

This event will look specifically at Camp Mohican and broadly at the Civilian Conservation Corps, while putting both in the context of the Great Depression and the challenges caused by depleted natural resources.  Like many CCC projects in Ohio and throughout the country, the work at Camp Mohican rehabilitated the area’s natural resources while creating a park that would be enjoyed for generations.

The event will be held on Monday, April 18th at 7 PM in the CRF Museum. Doors open at 6:30 PM. The event is free and open to the public, with support for the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum provided by Ohio Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.