A follow up to my earlier post on the 80th Anniversary Civilian Conservation Corps event held last weekend in the Headquarters Area of the Ten Mile river Scout Camps. The Headquarters Area was also the site of the of the CCC Camp Ten Mile river in 1933. An article appeared in the Times Herald Record yesterday.
In the midst of the Great Depression, a group of 200 young men from as far away as Oregon were trucked to Camp Ten Mile River in southwestern Sullivan County under a new federal program called the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Those men, once unemployed, would wake at 6 a.m. and get a hearty meal of French toast, oatmeal or scrambled eggs. By 8 a.m., local woodsmen were teaching them about fire suppression and forest clean-up work.
For pay, $25 would go back to the men’s families and $5 would stay in their pockets.
That piece of history was remembered Sunday at the Ten Mile River Scout Museum, 80 years after the New Deal program was created by President Franklin Roosevelt.
Click on the link above to see the full article and a phot of the Museum’s 2013 Assistant Curator.
Was this ever referred to as Spruce Ridge Boy Scout Camp? I ask because I have some vidio copies of films (I may have the original films…not sure) taken by Carl Meltzer of activities at Spruce Ridge Boy Scout Camp in the early 1930’s. My father Charles Ellison and his older brother Miles, waterfront directors in different years, appear at times on the tapes.
If I have the right place and you collect and maintain related historical materials, I’d be interested in donating these vidio tapes (and films, if I can find them). Hope to hear from you.