Vogel State Park welcomed around 25 visitors to the John B. Derden Civilian Conservation Corps Museum on Saturday, May 9, for its annual Civilian Conservation Corps History Day, an event that honors the young men who built the park during the Great Depression.
CCC History Day originally functioned as a reunion for former CCC members, but after the passing of the last local enrollee several years ago, it has evolved into a historical program with speeches, excerpt readings, live demonstrations and refreshments.
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This year, Vogel State Park volunteer Dagmar Taylor hosted the event alongside her husband, Ray Taylor, a local historian who also volunteers at the park. It lasted from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For much of the afternoon, the Taylors guided presentations and discussions on the lives of many local teenagers and young men who left their struggling farms and hometowns during the Great Depression to join the CCC and send money home to their families.
“It gave a boy a sense of value and belonging that he was helping his family,” Ray Taylor said, adding that CCC workers built many of the historic structures and state parks still used throughout North Georgia today, including Vogel.
Ray Taylor explained that President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the CCC in 1933 to provide jobs to roughly three million unemployed young men nationwide.
“For a vast majority of them, it was a real godsend,” he said.
Throughout the event, Dagmar Taylor shared several reflections of former CCC members. One, written by former enrollee Ray Johnson, read, “God created this universe. He gave us spring, with its beauty of flowers, the birds and the trees. Now he has given us the CCC and this man, Roosevelt. For that, I praise God.”
Several community members also came forward to share family stories about the CCC. Among them was Steve Peppers, who spoke about his paternal uncle joining the program during the Great Depression.
Peppers said his family struggled after his uncle’s three oldest brothers were murdered in 1931, forcing many of the younger children to drop out of school to work on the family farm. He said his uncle joined the CCC at 16 years old for the promise of $1 a day.
“It’s hard to imagine how much a dollar a day meant to a family like this,” Peppers said. “But they did it. They survived.”
Ray Taylor explained that CCC workers earned $30 a month and were typically required to send $25 of that home to their families.
“That $25 was a huge impact to the family,” he said. “Because at the time, we had people out of work. We had people hungry. We had people that were homeless. (But) we had empty buildings scattered around. We had warehouses full of food and warehouses full of clothes.”
Another community member, Vogel State Park volunteer Beverly Bradley, explained how to find out whether a family member served in the CCC. She said people can request records through the National Archives using the potential enrollee’s birth date and Social Security number.
Bradley said she began researching her father-in-law’s possible CCC service after encouragement from Ray and Dagmar Taylor.
“I came in here, and I had this idea that my father-in-law built a dam,” Bradley said. “He did not build a dam. I don’t know where I got that idea.”
Instead, Bradley discovered her father-in-law had been stationed in Suches, where she said he likely contributed to several “beautiful works of stone,” like the mountain crossings at Neel Gap.
“When you travel, look up anything that is CCC,” Dagmar Taylor told attendees. “You’ll be surprised how much has been created by these guys.”
