CCC Monument (stone fireplace and chimney)
Harris Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
361st Co. C.C.C. Camp S-62-PA
The Story
This stone fireplace and chimney are all that remain of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, one of thousands that dotted the country during the Great Depression. Beginning in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal put unemployed young men to work here under the CCC — Company 361 at Camp S-62-PA — planting trees, fighting erosion, and building the trails, roads, and shelters of Pennsylvania's state forests and parks. The hand-laid stonework is a signature of CCC craftsmanship, meant to last long after the tents and barracks came down.
Why it matters
The CCC was one of the New Deal's most popular programs, giving relief to a generation of jobless young men while reshaping America's public lands — much of the conservation infrastructure enjoyed today was built by these hands.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the spring of 1933, the country was three years deep into the Great Depression. Banks had failed, farms had gone under, and a quarter of the American workforce had no job to go to. Young men in particular drifted — riding the rails, standing in bread lines, watching their prospects vanish before they'd really begun.
Within weeks of taking office, President Franklin Roosevelt launched the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the first and most beloved programs of his New Deal. The idea was simple and popular: put unemployed young men to work outdoors, restoring the nation's forests and farmland, and send most of their modest pay straight home to their struggling families.
Here in the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, that national plan touched the ground. Company 361 settled into Camp S-62-PA, in the wooded country of Harris Township, and got to work on the forests of Centre County. The camp you're standing near was one small piece of a program that would eventually operate in every state.
People & events
The men of Company 361 were, for the most part, ordinary young fellows from Pennsylvania towns and cities — sons of out-of-work miners, laborers, and farmers. They came to camps like this one for the promise of steady food, a roof, and a paycheck when almost nothing else was on offer.
Life in a CCC camp was run with a light military discipline. Enrollees lived in barracks, rose to a schedule, and spent their days on hard outdoor labor: planting trees by the thousands, fighting the erosion that decades of logging and careless farming had left behind, and building the roads, trails, and shelters that opened Pennsylvania's forests to the public. The classic CCC stonework — carefully hand-laid fieldstone, meant to endure — was a signature of their craft.
That is exactly what survives here. The barracks and mess tents came down long ago, but the fireplace and chimney the men built stayed standing. A hearth is a fitting thing to outlast a camp; it was the center of warmth and gathering, and it remains as a quiet monument to the young men who passed through.
Its place in the American story
The CCC was one of the most successful and popular experiments in American history. Over its run from 1933 until it wound down early in the Second World War, it put roughly three million young men to work. They planted billions of trees, checked erosion across millions of acres, and built much of the infrastructure Americans still enjoy in state and national parks and forests today.
Its genius lay in doing two kinds of rescue at once — lifting up a generation of jobless young men while healing land that a century of heedless use had worn out. The small monthly wage, most of it mailed home, rippled out to families in towns far from any camp.
When you find a stone shelter, a trailhead, or a hand-built chimney in an American forest, there's a good chance it traces back to these workers. A ruin like this one in Centre County is a local thread in that national story: the New Deal made visible, still standing in the woods.
If you visit
Come to the stonework itself. Look closely at how the fireplace and chimney are built — the fitted fieldstone, the mortar joints, the sense that someone meant this to last. That care is the whole point; it's the difference between a pile of rocks and a piece of craftsmanship left behind on purpose.
Let yourself picture what's missing. The barracks, the tents, the sounds of a working camp are all gone, and the forest has grown back in around the hearth. That contrast — a lone chimney standing where a small community once lived and worked — is what gives the place its quiet power.
This makes a rewarding stop on a slower drive through central Pennsylvania's forest country, where the CCC's roads and trails still lace the ridges. Pair it with a walk in the surrounding state forest and you'll be traveling on ground these young men helped shape. Bring a little patience and imagination; this is a place that rewards standing still for a moment more than rushing on.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · Civilian Conservation Corps
Themes & tags
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