Rock Solid: The 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps built many of Juneau’s recreational, cultural landmarks

During the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed some of Juneau’s most enduring places. A special aspect of the program in Southeast Alaska restored, preserved and carved new Alaska Native totem poles during the Great Depression.

The American stock market crashed in 1929. What followed was a time of massive unemployment when men stood in long lines for a potential job and women stood in bread lines. Homelessness was rampant. Children wore ragged clothes and were sometimes shoeless. The 1930s was a time of desperate scarcity. Hope was beyond the reach of most Americans. And then a glimmer of light appeared.

Within one month of taking office in March of 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was designed to put people to work during the crushing unemployment of the Great Depression. It lifted many out of poverty and trained men with future job skills. (For an excellent essay on how the Depression began, read www.federalreservehistory.org). In Juneau, the lasting results of CCC enrollees’ work continue to be enjoyed today, but their origins are perhaps forgotten.

The goal of the national CCC program was conservation of national public lands and natural resources. Projects included erosion and flood control, improvement of recreation sites, construction of roads, trails and employment for single, young men aged 18-25 years. Nationwide the “relief” program trained thousands of men, and housed and fed them. The pay was one dollar a day. Twenty-five dollars were sent home to the enrollee’s family and the worker kept $5.

Looking around Juneau, there are numerous remnants of CCC construction. The most well-known structure is Skater’s Cabin, the popular U.S. Forest Service recreation site on the western shore of Mendenhall Lake. Inside the natural stone building a concrete panel is embedded in the stonework above the fireplace. It reads “C.C.C., Department of Agriculture, US Forest Service, 1936.”

Unlike most CCC efforts in the Lower 48 states where the U.S. Army administered the program, in the Territory of Alaska the Forest Service was in charge. Not far from Skater’s Cabin a large CCC camp was established that housed workers and fed them during a time when both shelter and food were not guaranteed.

Residents were keenly interested in the program. In a 1938 Alaska Daily Empire column, the reporter accompanied Forest Service officials on an April inspection tour of CCC projects. After driving out the road, the official group joined men at the Montana Creek CCC camp for a meal described in detail.

“Thirty husky young men filed into the mess hall,” the newspaper article reports, for Swiss steak, fried potatoes, tomatoes, creamed lima beans, pickles, celery, jam and homemade bread with “all the butter you wanted,” including pie and coffee for a government cost of 23 cents per meal.

The 1938 Empire article continues: “The camp itself, long-established, is familiar to most of the residents of this community. The four-man portable houses are snug, clean and heated with oil stoves. The camp has its own light plant and there are washing, laundry and shower rooms, a recreation hall; virtually everything to make camp life comfortable for the young men who live there.” Today this site continues to feed and care for local families; it is the location of the Juneau Community Garden on Montana Creek Road.

Several projects in the Mendenhall Glacier area were constructed by CCC enrollees. In addition to Skater’s Cabin, the three-sided log shelter on the Trail of Time (subsequently rebuilt a few times) and the Nugget Creek Trail, an extension of the well-used East Glacier Trail which ended with the now-deteriorated Vista Creek shelter, are places hikers enjoy regularly 90 years after construction. Visitors on the Trail of Time recognize today’s ice limit signs marking the retreating terminus of the glacier from early 1900 (the 1906 date, chiseled on a cliff, fell off a few years ago) through 1939. Carl Hagerup, a retired CCC wooden sign maker who marked the locations, later chiseled the dates into boulders and bedrock that hikers can find today.

Dan Moller was a project manager for Juneau’s CCC. The trail, cabin and early ski area on Douglas Island bears his name. Prior to Eaglecrest, the Dan Moller ski area was where locals learned and honed their downhill ski skills. Another Juneau landmark, also replaced since the 1930s, is the Calhoun Avenue Overpass connecting Fifth Street to today’s Aak’w Village District. Its purpose was to provide safe access for children walking from the tidelands to Capital School (now the Terry Miller legislative building) on Fifth Street. A brass plaque near the overpass explains details. Auke Village Recreation Area picnic shelters located 14 Miles north of downtown, Lena Beach recreation site (including the Lena Loop Road) and West Glacier Trail are contributions made by CCC enrollees.

The Civilian Conservation Corps was initially conceived for only young white men. Alaska Natives were excluded. However, due to the strong support of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the intervention of Tlingit attorney William Paul and others, the CCC was adjusted to equal numbers of Alaska Natives and white men.

During the 1930s in Southeast Alaska a unique CCC program was created to salvage, restore, replace and occasionally carve new Alaska Native totem poles. This important effort came after a hiatus where traditional carving skills were almost lost due to government policies that prioritized Western culture over Alaska Native “time immemorial” practices and customs.

The totem project initially had a mixed response among Native people, according to Dr. Emily Moore who devoted a decade to researching the CCC totem project for her 2017 book “Proud Raven, Panting Wolf,” published by the University of Washington Press. Totem poles and their stories are private clan property, known as “at.oow,” and permission was needed to reproduce the poles, house posts, screens and structures. In Moore’s preface, she writes, “the CCC program was messy, imperfect, and full of botched communications. Yet it was one of the most significant cross-cultural endeavors in Native/American art programs in the interwar period, and its importance remains today.”

One of the key people involved in this sensitive totem restoration project was Forest Service architect Linn Forrest Sr. His task was to negotiate and ensure Native peoples’ wishes were respected in a complicated relationship. He would design the totem pole parks in Saxman and Totem Bight near Ketchikan.

Ninety years later the work and relationships endure and provide new opportunities for cooperation, as seen by the Kooteeyaa Deiyi project by Sealaska Heritage Institute of new totem poles along Juneau’s waterfront.

Forrest went on to design numerous Juneau buildings in private practice after leaving the federal government. However, one of Juneau’s most beloved structures is his official agency creation from the 1960s: the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, built on a bedrock ledge and facing the glacier which was much closer in 1962 than it is today. The style of stonework and wood from CCC days shows through in the historic building.

Two well-known totem poles in Juneau from the CCC era are the “YaxTe’,” or Big Dipper, pole at Auke Recreation Area (the popular picnic shelters were also originally built in the 1930s by the CCC) and the Governor’s Totem Pole beside the governor’s residence on Calhoun Avenue.

Not far from the governor’s mansion at then-Capital Elementary School, in 1985 fifth-grade students investigated the CCC for a class project. Their teacher was Judy Maier. She collaborated with Conner Sorensen, a history professor at the then-named University of Alaska-Juneau to guide the students in researching newspapers and other history materials. The class interviewed former CCC enrollees in Juneau, as well as their grandparents and other elders 50 years after the heyday of the organization. The youngsters produced an important 42-page book, with photos, titled “The Feeling of the 1930s: The CCC and the Depression.” It preserves local stories that might otherwise be lost to time.

Five years later in 1990, Maier created a similar project when she taught fifth grade at Auke Bay Elementary School. The class compiled another 42-page local history book titled “A Step Back Into Old Auke Bay.” These two small books contain some of the most relevant histories of early life in Juneau.

The Civilian Conservation Corps existed from 1933 through June 30, 1942. World War II ended the effort. The CCC pulled men out of poverty with important work, taught them valuable skills and provided money to their families during years of the Great Depression. Juneauites benefit today nearly 100 years later from their work.

• Contact Laurie Craig at laurie.craig@juneauempire.com.