CCC built many of state’s trails during 1930s

When most hikers trek Maine trails, it’s a good bet they’re not thinking of how the trail got there in the first place. If they wonder about it at all, they probably figure a local trail club designed and built that fantastic tour through the woods to the mountains.

In some cases, that’s correct. Local clubs did build miles of trails in their areas. But the single most important group in terms of trail building was the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s.

From 1933 to 1942 the CCC designed and constructed trails throughout the country, including all over Maine. With 21 camps in Maine, of from 100 to 300 men, from Alfred in Cumberland County to Beddington in Washington County, they spread out in crews along remote stretches of back country. They wielded shovels, picks, and saws to create many of the trails we hike today.

They worked from a camp in Gilead on the Maine-New Hampshire border in the White Mountains. From the Bridgton camp, it was on the Appalachian Trail, and out of the Millinocket camp in Baxter State Park.

The original mission of the CCC was not to build trails, but to reclaim vast stretches of decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees. It was known as Franklin Roosevelt’s “Tree Army.” By 1935 over a half a million men were in 2,650 camps in every state. The enrollees in the corps were men between 18 and 25 who needed jobs. They were paid $30 a month and were required to send $25 of it home to family. Once the reclamation work was done in all of the then 48 states, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Alaska, the CCC turned its attention to building recreational infrastructures like trails.

When CCC veteran Myles Fenton recalls his personal involvement in the “C’s” as he calls it, it’s clear that his experience mirrors the corps’ history. He joined in January 1937 and remembers what work and camp life was like in Bridgton.

“Each state forester was assigned an area to be cleared of gypsy moth, brown-tail moth, and pine rust infestations. Then when the work was cleared, we’d move on,” he said in an interview at his home in Sorrento recently.

A typical day, as Fenton remembers it, went like this: “Wake-up was at five o’clock. Then we’d fall in for formation and breakfast. We’d load into the trucks and head for the work site. We were trucked back to camp at four in the afternoon. After supper a few of us would run laps around the racetrack at the fairgrounds behind the camps. We’d run laps, take a shower, go to bed, and sleep like a baby.” Every camp had specific work details assigned to it. After the work was accomplished the camp sometimes would disband and relocate to the next detail.

He then recalled his time in the summer of 1937 when he was a member of the crew that cleared the final section that completed the Appalachian Trail. “We would go in by truck with a crew of five or six men. We’d go as far as the truck could go, then load our packs with tools and food. I remember a heavy pack and a darned hard hump over the mountain to the work site. Then we’d make a brush bed to sleep on and stay out for two weeks.”

Once the trail was made, the work changed to making lean-tos along it. Myles worked on the Poplar Ridge Lean-to, at the top of Poplar Ridge. “On the climb up, I remember the forester saying just one more ridge and we’re there. We just kept going up and up.” The lean-to was one of those built with a sleeping platform made of saplings laid next to each other. It was known as a “baseball-bat” lean-to and a challenge to sleep on for modern-day hikers.

Most of the men in the Maine camps came from Maine, but a few came from other states in New England. When asked what it was about being in the CCC that changed his life, Fenton responded: “You learned how to work together with people from different backgrounds.” Also, in the camps you could take courses after work, to complete either a grammar school or high school education, he said.

By 1942 the Corps was disbanded, despite Roosevelt’s desire to make it a permanent part of the Department of the Interior. Fifty years after the final section between Spaulding Mountain and Sugarloaf was completed by the men from the Bridgton camp, a dedication plaque was set in a boulder along the trail honoring the CCC. Myles and his wife were there for the ceremony along with dignitaries from the Appalachian Trail Conference. The event was covered in an issue of the Appalachian Trailways News, the official newsletter of the Appalachian Trail Conference, located in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va. It was also mentioned in a National Geographic book “Adventures in the Mountains,” published in 1988.

The CCC’s greatest legacy may not have been in the building of trails, however. The program became a model for virtually every other conservation organization in the country. Without the Civilian Conservation Corps, there probably wouldn’t have been a Maine Conservation Corps or AmeriCorps, among others that might not have been. The CCC left its mark on the landscape, in the form of trails and primitive campsites, in every corner of the country. Their contribution to the effort of building recreational opportunities for everyone to enjoy will far outlive the participants. Camden Hills, Baxter State Park, and the Appalachian Trail owe much of their very existence to the determination and skill of the crews of the CCC.

So the next time you wander along a trail in those places and ask yourself, “How did this trail get here?” the answer could be that it came from the work of a Depression-era public works program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, made up of men like Myles Fenton.

Brad Viles is an avid hiker who lives in Ellsworth.