Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Parker State Park
Groesbeck, Limestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In August 1935, construction of a state park began here on the former town site of Springfield under the direction of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The group assigned to build Fort Parker State Park was Company 3807(C), an African American CCC Camp. From 1935 to 1942, the park company constructed park buildings, roads and facilities, erected a dam across the Navasota River, and reconstructed old Fort Parker. Located nearby, old Fort Parker was rebuilt in preparation for a Texas Centennial observance in 1936, and was the first of the CCC projects completed. The dam that created Lake Fort Parker was concluded by 1938 and required breaking and hauling rock for cement, digging out the dam footings, spillway, and wing walks, and pouring cement for the dam. Creating the park facilities included clearing and building five miles of roads, constructing an activity center / bath house, drinking fountains, and cement picnic tables. Former Texas Governor Pat Neff dedicated Fort Parker State Park in May 1941, and declared it open to the public. Company 3807(C) was transferred out of the area in 1942 after completing several complex tasks over a span of almost seven years. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In August 1935, an all–African American unit, Civilian Conservation Corps Company 3807(C), began building a state park on the former town site of Springfield. Over nearly seven years the company cleared roads, poured a dam that created Lake Fort Parker, built picnic areas and a bathhouse, and reconstructed old Fort Parker in time for the 1936 Texas Centennial. Former Governor Pat Neff dedicated the finished park in 1941, and the company moved on in 1942 after a remarkable run of complex work.
Why it matters
The park is a lasting monument to the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps and to the Black CCC companies whose skilled labor built public landscapes Americans still enjoy, even under the era's segregation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This marker stands in the world of the 1930s, when the Great Depression had thrown millions of Americans out of work and the New Deal answered with a bold experiment: put the unemployed to work improving the nation's land. The Civilian Conservation Corps, founded in 1933, sent young men into forests and fields to build parks, plant trees, dig lakes, and raise the public spaces Americans would enjoy for generations.
In August 1935, that national effort came to Limestone County, to the former town site of Springfield, where work began on a new state park. The timing was pointed: Texas was preparing to celebrate its Centennial in 1936, a hundred years since independence, and the state was eager to mark its history in a way visitors could see and touch.
The CCC operated within the hard realities of its time, including racial segregation. The company assigned to build this park — Company 3807(C) — was an all–African American unit, one of the many Black CCC companies whose skilled labor shaped America's public landscape even as the era kept them in separate camps.
People & events
From 1935 to 1942, Company 3807(C) transformed this ground through nearly seven years of demanding work. Their first completed project was a reconstruction of old Fort Parker nearby, rebuilt in preparation for the 1936 Texas Centennial — a fitting first task, tying the new park to the state's founding story just as the anniversary arrived.
The centerpiece was the dam. Building it meant breaking and hauling rock for cement, digging out the footings, spillway, and wing walls, and pouring the concrete by hand and machine — grueling labor that by 1938 had created Lake Fort Parker where the Navasota River ran. Around the water the company built the ordinary comforts that make a park usable: some five miles of cleared and constructed roads, an activity center and bath house, drinking fountains, and cement picnic tables that families would gather around for decades.
In May 1941, former Texas Governor Pat Neff dedicated Fort Parker State Park and declared it open to the public — the finished fruit of the company's labor. The following year, in 1942, Company 3807(C) was transferred out of the area, its long run of complex work complete just as the nation's attention turned fully toward the Second World War.
Its place in the American story
Fort Parker State Park is a lasting piece of the New Deal made visible. Across the country, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the dams, trails, lodges, and picnic grounds that still define many state and national parks — a vast public inheritance created by men who needed the work as much as the land needed the labor. To walk this park is to walk through that history.
It also preserves a truth the era often obscured: the essential role of Black CCC companies. Company 3807(C) did skilled, complex construction — dam building, road work, historical reconstruction — under a system that segregated them into separate camps. Their craftsmanship endures in the very ground visitors enjoy, a reminder that the public landscapes Americans share were built in part by people the era refused to treat as equals.
And in rebuilding old Fort Parker for the 1936 Centennial, the company connected the New Deal present to the deep Texas past, showing how a single site can carry more than one layer of American memory at once.
If you visit
At Fort Parker State Park near Groesbeck, you're seeing the handiwork of the Civilian Conservation Corps up close. As you drive the roads, cross near the dam, or rest at a picnic area, remember that much of what you're using was cleared, quarried, and poured by the men of Company 3807(C) between 1935 and 1942. Look for the sturdy, hand-built character of the older structures — that CCC craftsmanship is the thing to notice.
Lake Fort Parker itself is their monument. The water you see exists because a company of workers broke rock and poured concrete across the Navasota River, finishing the dam by 1938. Nearby, the reconstructed old Fort Parker — their first completed project, raised for the 1936 Texas Centennial — lets you fold a second, older chapter of Texas history into the same visit.
Come with the whole story in mind: a Depression-era work program, an all–African American company doing skilled labor under segregation, and a park dedicated by a former governor in 1941 that families have enjoyed ever since. It makes for a rich stop on a road trip through central Texas — a place where the land itself is the artifact, and the people who shaped it deserve to be remembered as you enjoy it.
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 people
- · Pat Neff
Related events
- · Texas Centennial (1936)
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