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"More Weight On Men, More Roads Through Forest Show Result of One Camp" article from the Daily Recorder-Gazette newspaper

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This article in the Greenfield Daily Recorder-Gazette shows why the Civilian Conservation Corps was such a popular program in the 1930s. In July of 1933 the CCC camps in the Erving and Wendell State Forests had only been in operation for two months but they were active and well organized. The Reporter describes the Wendell camp's work in the area around Ruggles Pond which is being transformed into a state park. Workers build a stone dam to raise the water level in the pond. The park and dam are still in use today. The article emphasizes the military organization of the camps, which were administered by the War Department. As a result of hard work and discipline, young men "from manufacturing towns in the eastern part of the state, feeble with undeveloped muscles and sunken chests, have become husky and bronzed?"

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