HistoricSiteMarkers
Progressive & Modern Era

Civilian Conservation Corps

Shippen Township, Tioga County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

In March 1933, the federal government created the CCC to combat the massive unemployment of the Great Depression. Continuing until 1942, the CCC enrolled some three million youths nationwide. In Pennsylvania, 194,572 men were enrolled at 114 camps. The CCC planted billions of trees, built roads and dams, fought forest fires, and developed parks including Leonard Harrison and Colton Point State Parks here.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

Created in March 1933 to fight Depression-era unemployment, the Civilian Conservation Corps put some three million young men to work on the nation's public lands until 1942. In Pennsylvania alone, nearly 195,000 men served at 114 camps, planting trees, building roads and dams, and fighting fires. Their labor developed Leonard Harrison and Colton Point State Parks overlooking the Pine Creek Gorge here.

Why it matters

The CCC embodied the New Deal's belief that government could rescue both people and landscapes, and its handiwork still shapes America's parks and forests.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related events

  • · Great Depression
  • · New Deal

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

William B. Wilson

Blossburg, PA · est. 1948

William B. Wilson rose from the coal seams of Pennsylvania's northern tier to the highest councils of American government. Born in Scotland in 1862 and set to work young in the Arnot mines, he became a leading voice for organized labor in an era of brutal mine conditions and bitter strikes. In 1913 President Wilson named him the very first U.S. Secretary of Labor, a post he held through the upheavals of World War I and its aftermath until 1921. The house across the road anchored the life of a man who never forgot the pit where he started.

Corning & Blossburg Railroad

Mansfield, PA · est. 1983

Completed in 1840, the Corning & Blossburg Railroad was one of the earliest railroads in the Northeast, running from Corning, New York, down to the coal fields around Blossburg, Pennsylvania. Built by the Tioga Navigation Company, it stitched together the Chemung Canal and the Erie Railroad with the region's mines, moving coal to distant markets. It marked the moment when rails began to supplement and surpass the canals of the young industrial age.

Rural Electrification

Mansfield, PA · est. 1986

In the depths of the Depression, three of every four Pennsylvania farms still had no electric power—darkness that private utilities saw no profit in lifting. The New Deal changed that: with federal loans behind them, farmers banded together into consumer-owned cooperatives to string their own lines. The Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative, incorporated in October 1936, brought light and modern machinery to much of north-central Pennsylvania.

Lymansville

Coudersport, PA · est. 1947

The first settlement in this rugged region took root in 1808, planted by Major Isaac Lyman, a land agent and veteran of the Revolutionary War. Around his pioneer holding grew the essential institutions of frontier life: the area's first saw and grist mills, its first post office, and its first court. Lymansville became the seedbed from which the wider settlement of the county followed.