New Deal, New Landscape , livre ebook

New Deal, New Landscape
New Deal New Landscape

The C IVILIAN C ONSERVATION C ORPS and S OUTH C AROLINA S S TATE P ARKS
Tara Mitchell Mielnik
2011 University of South Carolina
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2011
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2013
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Mielnik, Tara Mitchell.
New Deal, new landscape : the Civilian Conservation Corps and South Carolina s state parks / Tara Mitchell Mielnik.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57003-984-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.)-South Carolina-History. 2. Parks- South Carolina-History. 3. Conservation of natural resources-South Carolina-History. I. Title.
S932.S78M54 2011
333.78 309757-dc23
2011017272
Preceeding spread and chapter opening photographs: sand ripples, Ryan McVay / Getty Images; rock wall detail and pine cross section, courtesy of Pat Callahan; water ripples, Yasuhide Fumoto / Getty Images
ISBN 978-1-61117-202-7 (ebook)
For the boys of the South Carolina CCC
And for my boys- Mike, Mitchell, and Carson
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
1. Depression and the New Deal in South Carolina
2. Emergency Conservation Work and the Civilian Conservation Corps: An Administrative Overview of the Civilian Conservation Corps
3. A good set of boys here and I like it fine : Life in the South Carolina Civilian Conservation Corps
4. Building Opportunity: Tourism, Forestry, and State Parks in South Carolina
5. Conservation and Commemoration: South Carolina s Recreational Demonstration Areas, Cheraw, Colleton, and Kings Mountain
6. Forestry Work and State Park Development: The South Carolina Forestry Commission and the Civilian Conservation Corps
7. South Carolina s Breathing Spaces : Opening and Operating the State Parks during the New Deal Decade
8. Learning from the Parks: Resources and Interpretation in South Carolina
APPENDIX : A List of Civilian Conservation Corps Camps in South Carolina
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
Map of the first state parks in South Carolina during New Deal decade
Map of the forty-seven state parks in South Carolina, 2010
Interior view of the barracks of Company 1417
Myrtle Beach State Park, unidentified camp personnel
Table Rock State Park, CCC enrollees trained in furniture construction
Company 445 cooks and KPs
Company 439 baseball team
Myrtle Beach State Park, Company 1408, SP-4
Table Rock State Park, Company 2434, veteran enrollees
Company 4465, African American enrollees
Cheraw State Park picnic shelter, winter 1936-1937
Cheraw State Park caretaker s house, winter 1936-1937
Colleton State Park enclosed shelter
Colleton State Park picnic shelter
Kings Mountain National Military Battlefield, headquarters
Kings Mountain State Park, shelter 1
Oconee State Park, Company 3449
Chester State Park entrance
Chester State Park picnic shelter
Poinsett State Park, CCC enrollees constructing bathhouse
Poinsett State Park trailside shelter
Poinsett State Park postcard
Poinsett State Park, CCC enrollees constructing cabin furniture
Lee State Park picnic table
Lee State Park water fountain
Paris Mountain State Park bathhouse, ca. 1940
Myrtle Beach State Park bathhouse
Myrtle Beach State Park postcard
Myrtle Beach State Park camp cabin unit
Myrtle Beach State Park shelter 1
Myrtle Beach State Park, chimney detail
Oconee State Park bathhouse under construction
Oconee State Park postcard
Sesquicentennial State Park shelter 1
Sesquicentennial State Park shelter 1, interior detail
Sesquicentennial State Park bathhouse and concessionaire
Sesquicentennial State Park monument
Hunting Island State Park postcard
Table Rock State Park, Company 5465
Table Rock State Park, Hemlock shelter
Table Rock State Park small shelter
Barnwell State Park picnic shelter
Edisto Beach State Park beach cabin
Edisto Beach State Park guard house and entry gate
Edisto Beach State Park picnic shelter
Table Rock State Park, square dance at lodge, 1958
Table Rock State Park, lodge at night, 1958
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the support and assistance of several outstanding historians who mentored me throughout the process of research and writing. I would especially like to recognize Carroll Van West, Mary Hoffschwelle, and Amy Staples at Middle Tennessee State University; Leslie Sharp, now at Georgia Tech; and J. Tracy Power of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History (SCDAH). They have all provided a great deal of encouragement and assistance in both this project and my career. Graduate school colleagues Stacey Griffin, Carole Summers Morris, Blythe Semmer, and Michael Strutt are now lifelong friends who deserve my thanks for their continued encouragement and friendship.
During the processes of research and writing, I have incurred many debts to many people. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) alumni and their families, especially Mr. and Mrs. I. V. Butler, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Damon, and Mr. and Mrs. Sam Blanton, all of Charleston; Mary Ann Camp, of Spartanburg; and the members of the Fort Moultrie chapter of the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni have shared their photographs, memorabilia, and memories unselfishly with me. In Columbia, South Carolina, the following historians have provided a great deal of assistance: Karen McMullen at the South Carolina State Library, Robin Copp at the Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, and Al Hester at the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism (SCPRT), who has proved himself a willing ally in all things related to researching the CCC in South Carolina. The SCPRT is the caretaker of the state parks, which are all treasures in their own right; I hope this book inspires its readers to go visit these amazing places in person.
At the SCDAH, where the bulk of the research for this project was undertaken, I have many friends and colleagues who contributed to this project, both directly and indirectly. At the risk of leaving someone out, I d like to thank the following former and current SCDAH staffers: Tim Belshaw, Sharon Mackintosh, Wade Dorsey, Carol Crawford, Tommy Red Betenbaugh, Bryan Collars, Andy Chandler, Dan Elswick, Megan Brown, Elizabeth Morton Johnson, Mary Edmonds, Ben Hornsby, and Rodger Stroup. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to J. Tracy Power, historian at the SCDAH, and his wife, Carol Thompson Power, for their friendship, encouragement, hospitality, assistance with research and editing, and use of their laptop. My editor at the University of South Carolina Press, Alex Moore, has done more than his fair share of hand-holding and exercised his patience beyond measure with a nervous first-time author; I am extremely grateful for the pleasure of making his acquaintance.
Claudette Stager at the Tennessee Historical Commission in Nashville provided a great deal of assistance in an early stage of this project, and ongoing encouragement. Ann Roberts, director emeritus of the Metropolitan Historical Commission in Nashville, also provided encouragement and support, and a much-needed leave of absence at a crucial stage of writing. I am grateful to both of these women for their scholarship and professional example.
Finally, I must express my thanks and, more important, my love to my family. My mother (Scarlett Pistole Stout), my grandparents (Mertie Pistole Clemons and the late Alex Pistole), my great-grandmother (the late Mary Edith Swindell), and my uncles (Larry Pistole and Neal Pistole) instilled in me a love of history and historic places from too early for me to remember. Their faith in me and love for me is unquestioned, and for that I am extremely and eternally grateful. Kitty was a constant, if disinterested, companion throughout. Mike, Mitchell, and Carson have endured many absences of mind if not body, while I was gone to Carolina in my mind. I hope the side trips to South Carolina s state parks are happy memories for you; those trips with you were the best part of this project.
PREFACE
On October 24, 1929, the stock market crashed, marking the beginning of a period of American history that came to be known as the Great Depression. Throughout the country people lost their jobs, their savings, and, many believed, their future security. In South Carolina, the economy was depressed even before the stock market crash, and the crash only intensified the desperate situation in the state. Cotton prices dropped, banks failed, and city governments throughout the state went bankrupt. In the early 1930s at least seventeen counties in South Carolina had an unemployment rate of over 30 percent.
Franklin Roosevelt s New Deal came to the state in March 1933. By the end of that summer, over 400,000 South Carolinians, 25 percent of the state s population, were on relief, managed by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). In a program tainted nationwide by favoritism, nepotism, and racism, South Carolina was the only state in which more African Americans received FERA aid than whites. One of FDR s New Deal relief programs, Emergency Conservation Work (ECW), came to the state in 1933, shortly after FDR had