LOUDONVILLE — The Cleo Redd Fisher Museum in Loudonville will wrap up the current Speaker Series this month with a look at one of the most impactful government programs of the last 100 years — the Civilian Conservation Corps.
CCC historian, Cyrus Moore, will join the museum to discuss the impact of the CCC in America, in Ohio, and even in Loudonville.
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 U.S. Army, the CCC enrollees set to work through 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.
Among those camps housing CCC workers was Camp Mohican, established five miles southwest of Loudonville. The camp was established in July of 1935 and comprised of members of CCC Company 1570.
The men at Camp Mohican worked on a State Forest project that in time would restore the land to what it might have looked like before settlement and farming. Their work comprised the beloved landmarks and features that still dot Mohican State Park and Forest.
Moore will look at the organization and work of the Civilian Conservation Corps, while putting both in the context of the Great Depression and the challenges caused by depleted natural resources.
Cyrus Moore is the Director of the Baltimore Community Museum in the canal town of Baltimore, Ohio, in Fairfield County. Originally from Athens, Ohio, Cyrus attended Ohio University and then earned a master’s degree from Kent State University with his thesis on the Ohio Militia between the Civil War and the Spanish American War.
In addition to research, and writing, he is heavily involved in living history, most often portraying soldiers in World War I and the enrollees in the CCC.
The event will be held on Monday, April 18 at 7 p.m. in the CRF Museum. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. This 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.
The museum is located at 203 E. Main Street in Loudonville, Ohio. For more information visit www.crfmuseum.com.
