07 August 2013

Civilian Conservation Corps stonework at Gooseberry Falls State Park - Part IV


This post will finish my tour of the stonework at Gooseberry Falls State Park on Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior.  For newbies to the blog, the previous three posts are here:
Introduction and the "castle"
The old Visitor Center and the Water Tower
Buildings in the campground area
Steps, stairways, and walkways are ubiquitous in the park.  Some are purely functional in design, carved out of existing rock, but often, as exemplified by the top photo, the CCC workers took the extra step of using different colored rocks to add some visual interest to their work.

Elsewhere the "stonework" serves a simple utilitarian purpose, such as lifting woodwork off the ground to delay the onset of water damage and rot, as in this bench -


- or these in an amphitheater


For picnic tables, the stone becomes an integral part of the structure's design; in this case the rather wide cement between stones suggests to me that this project was given to new recruits who didn't have much experience in shaping stones to fit them together tightly:


I presume the workers moved up gradually from paving stones and bench supports until they had enough experience to work on the buildings themselves.  This water fountain and spigot might have been an intermediate step in the training:


Of all the non-building structures, the most dramatic is the chain fence along the edge of a promontory overlooking the lake:


These views show why the fence was considered necessary:


Because they are so close to the lake and are so often wetted with spray, they have accumulated a generous flora of lichens.


I'm in the process of deciding what to do with my category of Civilian Conservation Corps posts.  Life is too short for me to personally document the immense number of projects that were completed around the country.  I'm considering morphing this into some sort of group project, where interested readers might photograph and write up for their own blog a post about CCC stonework in their community or state, and then I could import selected text and images here with appropriate credit and links to the reader's work.  If you have suggestions, feel free to put them in the Comments.

23 comments:

  1. I think that's a fantastic suggestion for readers to take up the series -- I've really been enjoying your CCC series and reflecting on CCC work I've seen before. I hope you do incorporate readers' posts. I would love to do one myself -- do you have any suggestions on how to find CCC work in our local areas? (I haven't lived in my area very long, and for a variety of reasons have not explored the surrounding areas very much but am now in a position to do more exploring, especially if I know where to go.)

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    1. Morganna, I don't know if there is a single, comprehensive listing of all the CCC projects. I would think you would need to do an internet search or ask a local librarian for information.

      If you're in Idaho, these links might get you starte:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Civilian_Conservation_Corps_in_Idaho

      http://idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/ccc/idaho/camps.html

      http://mwdl.org/collections/1795.php

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    2. Morganna, try this map at the link that Ben Fortel found:

      http://livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu/map/

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  2. I have a fascination with CCC projects. There are a lot of them in the Kansas City area, including the older parts of our zoo and at many parks. I'd be up for doing some posts about some of the projects around here.

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  3. Great idea! There must lots of sites here in Norther Virginia

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  4. There is a small amount of stonework that looks similar to these you've been posting near my home at Iguazu National Park, Brazil. If you are willing to expand your scope anytime soon, I can take the job.

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    1. If what you're referring to is Inca stonework, it has some of the tightest junctions between stones I've ever seen anywhere. I'm baffled by how they did it.

      For TYWKIWDBI, I think I'll stick to CCC projects in order to promote that program and the concept behind it. But I would like to borrow your waterfall...

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  5. I found an interesting interactive map of the CCC projects in the US at the following address:

    www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/map-widget/ccc-map/

    There were a number of references when I Googled CCC projects.

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    1. That's a good map; it's not comprehensive, but it is useful. The PBS "American Experience" program on the CCC is outstanding, btw.

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  6. Manitou Springs in central Colorado has a variety of lovely stonework bridges. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_over_Fountain_Creek I don't have any knowledge of who built them, but the work is lovely, esp. up close.

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  7. This is a bit off topic, so let me first say that I enjoy your documentation of these works. Thank you for raising my awareness and interest.

    I have often wondered why CCC- and WPA-type projects have never really been offered as a viable solution to some of the employment and economic troubles over the last several years. Admittedly, our situation is not as dire as it was during the Great Depression, but I think that there are plenty who would benefit from the recreation of similar programs. There are plenty of public areas in need of some attention, and there are plenty of people looking for work.

    Have we backed ourselves into a corner with minimum wage laws, certifications, and liability issues? Is it technically impossible to create and maintain a program like this today? Do people simply shy away from manual labor projects (I'm sure some do, but I bet many others wouldn't).

    Or do programs like this actually exist, and I'm just overlooking them?

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    1. Leprae, I totally agree with you that programs like this could be useful today.

      Recently I found a description of one modern CCC program:

      http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/216081261.html

      I plan to write it up for the blog sometime this summer.

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    2. I'm in agreement too. Here in Britain, we have had a number of schemes for work-experience, and for people found guilty of minor offences to do work as community payback.

      In my home county of Yorkshire, we have many, many miles of drystone walls, that is, field and boundary walls built without any kind of mortar. Farmers, working under ever tighter budgets, can't afford the man-hours to repair them, and walls, some of them nearly a thousand years old, are being lost.
      A few weeks ago, I was out on the hills, and I stopped to talk to a young man who was carefully piecing together a section of wall. He told me he'd grown up in a city, and had been a wild young criminal, served prison time.
      But the prison had training facilities, and he started to learn bricklaying. On his release from prison, a charity group dedicated to working with past offenders suggested sending him on a dry-stone walling course in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
      And this was the first time he'd ever been right out of the city, surrounded by nothing but open land and blue sky, birds calling, sheep,
      no traffic noise, no music, no shouting....
      And, he said, "My head was quiet."
      And now, he's married to a country girl, feels at home on the hills, pieces walls together, choosing stones and setting them, by hand, so they'll stand for a couple of hundred years, untouched. His sheepdog lies quietly, watching, and he says. "This work gave me a life. Before this I had none, I was trouble, anger. You can't be angry, up here. And there's enough work to keep me busy for two lifetimes. I'm as happy as a man can be, and I was never happy, before."

      If only more people could follow his footsteps away from trouble.

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    3. What a wonderful story. Would you consider writing it up for Grit so I can link to it?

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    4. Stan: Thanks for the article. Maybe these programs do exist in greater numbers than I'm aware. It's interesting that this one has developed as a youth development program. It sounds like it's rather successful.

      soubriquet: That's a really great story. Thanks for sharing!

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    5. I would write it up, but I do sometimes feel that I'm intruding, when the material is from a conversation I had with someone who might prefer not to have his story published.

      I don't know, I kind of feel that telling the story here, on your blog based on another continent is sufficiently anonymised.

      Which is ridiculous reasoning, really, as many more people read tywkiwdbi than would ever read it on grit...

      I do, often agonise over whether to tell a story, or how much I should alter and obfuscate.

      Here's a strange thing. So far as I'm aware, none of my friends, relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances in the real world, know that I have a blog. Whereas, friends I've made via the blogworld, all except one, have never seen or spoken to me. Two separate worlds. I'd be mortified if someone from my daily life hailed me and said "Hey, I was reading your blog this morning and....."

      Ha. My workmates don't know I read poetry, visit art galleries, study history, they'd consider it all highly suspect.

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    6. Noted. Your secrets (and his) are safe with us.

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  8. I'm impressed with how well the CCC stonework has lasted. Obviously, stone is durable, but the mortar seems to have weathered remarkably well also. I'm assuming magic funds didn't appear in the last 50 years to re-point park structures.

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    1. It's possible that the work has been repaired in places. I've seen isolated instances of cracked and missing mortar over the years but haven't photographed those for the blog.

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  9. I'll be in Yellowstone in another month or so, I'll be sure to take pictures of anything I come across!

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    1. Please do, because I'm seriously thinking of taking this "crowdsourcing" technique live.

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  10. I've really enjoyed your CCC posts, too, and they've piqued my interest in the New Deal in general.

    With that in mind, the following isn't totally off topic:

    Ken Burn's "The Dust Bowl" was excellent if you haven't seen it.

    We moved to Fayette, MO last year and were very grateful for the city pool during the drought. This pool was built by the WPA and designed by Wesley Bintz - they are unusual because the swimming area is on the second story. My google-fu found this little blurb about it: http://livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu/projects/fayette-city-pool-fayette-mo/

    I think it's pretty cool that we've got one of the few around the country that is still in use.

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    1. That "Living New Deal" website is excellent, especially this map where you can sort by agency (CCC etc):

      http://livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu/map/

      Thank you, Ben.

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