Springdale, UT- At noon on Monday, Sept. 26, 2016, Zion National Park will be dedicating a statue of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worker at the Visitor Center plaza. The statue was made possible with the help of the CCC Legacy, the national organization dedicated to preserving the memories and heritage of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and several private donors.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a federal agency created to put people back to work during the 1930s Great Depression. Unemployment in the United States averaged 25%, and in Utah, it was nearly 34%. The CCC eventually enrolled approximately three million young men, mostly eighteen to twenty-five years old, to work on public land conservation projects.
Zion National Park hosted three CCC camps. NP-1 was located thirty miles north on the Kolob Plateau at Blue Springs. NP-2 was near the South Entrance west of the Virgin River, about where the South Campground is now located. NP-4, the Bridge Mountain camp, was located near the current Visitor Center and Watchman Campground. For nine years, the CCC built trails, roads, campgrounds, flood control devices, and much of the stonework visible in Zion today, including the South Entrance pillars and the South Campground Amphitheater.
Following the CCC statue dedication ceremony, the park will be showing the video,The Civilian Conservation Corp, From Depression to Destiny,at the Zion Human History Museum.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
