The CCC Camp

                                                                                                                                           

The Whittington’s sold the Old Dude Ranch to Sam Tate in 1924. By 1928, he was announcing plans for improving the Dude Ranch and for building his Tate Mountain Estates. However, those plans were greatly impacted by the Great Depression of 1929. With that financial disaster, Sam faced many problems including foreclosure of his mountain empire. With many people out of work by the late 1929’s, Franklin D. Roosevelt was swept into office as the new President in 1932 under the New Deal promises. One of his New Deal Programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).The CCC was a public works relief program for unemployed, unmarried men, ages 17–25. They were paid $30 a month of which $25 was sent home to their parents. It provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. For the most part, the CCC workers were employed to build structures on highways, parks and in forest lands. Pickens County did not have any government land where the CCC could set up a camp. Sam Tate, with his influence, did manage to have a camp established in his mountain community. Professor Perrow, a leader at the Pickens CCC Camp, stated in the November 16, 1938 Pickens Progress that, “the State Forest Service established the camp here at the request of the Pickens County Timber Association.” What the article failed to say is that the land where the camp was built belonged to Sam Tate and it was adjacent to the Old Dude Ranch. Further, the area where the CCC workers built roads and improvements was mostly the 10,000 acres of land owned by Sam Tate.

 The CCC Camp was established on July 21, 1933. It was known as Camp #1449 with an address associated with the Tate Post Office and Train Station. The Pickens Progress announced on June 15, 1933 that, “A Reforestation camp will be established in Pickens County by July and there will be a total of 250 men at the camp including 180 men from Camp Benning.” The article went on to say that, “The work will include protection of the standing timber, construction of fire brakes, building telephone lines, roads and trails.” Young men were selected from each local county to participate in the camp. Twenty young men were selected from a group of 60 applicants from Pickens County and began their employment in July 1933. Initially, the camp had tents to house the young men. The Army officers and civilians who assisted in training lived in some of the houses associated with the Old Dude Ranch. One of the first projects to be built at the camp was the mess hall and bunkroom. Lillie Mae Pendley said her father, Vernie Champion, helped build the camp. He hall/bunk house as being 60 feet wide and about 300 feet long. No evidence of where the building was located can be found today but it is estimated to have been near the current Bent Tree Administration building. The structure was probably a wood building with a metal roof. Unfortunately, no one can be found that has a picture of the building.