Architecture and Design

By the early 1930s, the United States was in the throes of the Great Depression, and the changes that swept the nation affected the NPS as well. Unemployment had reached a critical level. When newly elected Franklin Roosevelt took office, he acted quickly to combat the economic chaos. One of his first measures was the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

During the 1930s, Civilian Conservation Corp workers shaped and enhanced the natural environment and visitor facilities at Muir Woods.

In 1934, on July 4th, the CCC made their first appearance at Cedar Breaks, “acting as traffic directors, assisting in getting many of the stalled cars up to the Breaks and serving a barbecue to some 3,000 people” at the official dedication ceremony and celebration for the new national monument. That, of course was just the beginning of the Cs’ involvement at Cedar Breaks National Monument.

Picture it: A steamy summer morning in Big Bend. The year is 1934. Reveille has just sounded on a bugle, and a company of young men, already sweating from the heat in their tar paper huts, start to rise. They pull on their blue jean dungarees, load themselves into one-and-a-half ton trucks, and make the steep drive out of the Chisos Basin, stopping twice to pour water on the vehicles' struggling radiators.

Between World Wars I and II, Vancouver Barracks was the location of the regional headquarters for the Civilian Conservation Corps and was the site of an airfield in the early days of aviation.

Aiming to combat the disastrous effects of the stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established work relief programs. Out of work Americans were employed to construct and maintain infrastructure across the country. Thanks to these programs, which began in 1933, not only were thousands of unemployed workers provided with jobs, but the practice and visibility of archeology grew rapidly in the decade that followed.

Unveiled on November 8, 1933 as part of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the intent of the Civil Works Administration was to provide temporary winter construction work. In 1934, construction of the boundary wall was begun by local men hired under the CWA, causing visitors to enter the park through the visitor center.

Sandstone bluffs rise from the otherwise flat Great Plains of Nebraska at Scotts Bluff National Monument. The landscape provided resources for the area's inhabitants for thousands of years. The prominence served as a geographic way finder for westward travelers on the Oregon Trail and other routes in the mid-1800s. In the 1930s and 1940s, federally funded employment programs contributed to the park development, including the Summit Road and tunnels that are still used today.

New Deal programs, like the Civilian Conservation Corps, have left a lasting legacy at Scotts Bluff National Monument and other state and national parks throughout the United States.

A Works Progress Administration mural from the 1930s, depicting the Battle of Pell's Point, on display at a Bronx, New York courthouse.

Starting in summer of 2018, University of Mary Washington and NPS partnered for a field school at Prince William Forest Park. Students gained hands-on experience while helping to document two cultural landscapes, Cabin Camp 4 and Cabin Camp 2. The cabin camps were developed in the 1930s as part of the Recreational Demonstration Area program. This documentation will be used to complete CLI reports for the two camps, and the methods helped shape subsequent field schools.

Learn about the Historic American Landscape and Garden Project (1935-40). The project was carried out under the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in 1935-40. Sixty years after the project ended, the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) was established.