Camp Annawan, The CCC In Action

The 1920’s and 1930’s were years of struggle for the citizens of the Maple City and the rest of the United States. As the country fell into the grasps of the Great Depression many people tried to get by any way they could. President Herbert Hoover was unable to solve the economic downturn that haunted people worldwide. By 1932, the people of the United States decided that a new leader was needed and elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt as their next President.

President Roosevelt would create what would become known as the Alphabet Programs, which were designed to help put Americans back to work. The CCC, Civilian Conservation Corp, was one of those programs that came to be during President Roosevelt’s first one hundred days in office. On March 31, 1933, Congress gave the go ahead for the CCC to be put into operation. By April 7th, the first enrollee was signed up in Virginia and by April 17th the first CCC camp was operating in George Washington National Forest in the state of Virginia.

The Civilian Conservation Corp was designed to improve the National and State Parks by placing young men between the ages of 18 and 25 into work camps to complete the work that was being neglected. These young men also had to be single, and come from families that were on the nation’s relief rolls. While the men worked for the CCC they would earn $1 per day or $30 a month. Each enrollee was allowed to keep $5 for themselves and the rest had to be sent home to their families.

Once a young man signed up and was excepted he would be sent to the closest military base for training, since the United States Army was place in charge of the organizing of the CCC camps. Men who enrolled in northern Illinois were sent to Fort Sheridan located north of Chicago and on the shores of Lake Michigan. The men would be trained by Army personnel and then transferred to a CCC camp.

Henry County, Illinois would have enrollees working out of two CCC camps. One camp would be opened in Galva, Illinois in 1935 and close in 1939. The work completed by enrollees from the Galva Camp included planted trees, collecting seeds to plant in CCC nurseries, constructing terraces and building other soil erosion control devices throughout Henry its neighboring counties. The second CCC Camp was erected in September of 1935 and ceased work in June of 1941. Camp Annawan, as it became known, was built just west of the center of Annawan.

Camp Annawan was a Drainage Control Camp, which meant that the enrollees from that camp would work on projects, which helped control flooding in northwestern Illinois. The work projects were mostly contracted with the local drainage districts and had the enrollees clearing plant life and removing silt from local drainage ditches and streams. During its period of operation Camp Annawan would work with Drainage Districts as far north as Rock Falls, Illinois and work on the North Edwards River just south of Cambridge, Illinois. The projects would also cover drainage districts that were located east of Mineral, Illinois and up to the Mississippi River to the west of the camp.

Camp Annawan was unique in that it was just one of six drainage camps in Illinois. It also had the distinction as being one of the few Afro-American Camps in Illinois. The first enrollees, who arrived on August 23, 1935, began preparing the campsite for the rest of the young men and begin working on local projects. This first group of enrollees, were all Afro-American World War I Veterans in their late 20s and early 30s. They would work out of Camp Annawan until being replace by junior enrollees on June 26, 1936. The junior enrollees were all Afro-Americans between the ages of 18 and 25.

Camp Annawan would become known for not only its work projects but for the athletic teams that would play and win in local tournaments around Annawan. One of the biggest projects that the camp helped out with was during the winter of 1935-1936 when the snow fell too fast and piled up too deep for the local snow removal crews to keep up with. The local governmental officials would ask Camp Annawan for help with clearing the snow drifts from the local roadways, which they did with much success, opening the roads so mail could be delievered and men could get to work at the local coal mines.

In June of 1941 Camp Annawan was closed down and the men were sent home. Today there are no signs left of the once active CCC camp. If you would like to discover more information about Camp Annawan my book about Camp Annawan is available at the Annawan and Geneseo Libraries. Since this article was originally published my Camp Annawan book has sold out.

This post is from my book Leafing Through History

The three photographs included with this post were taken while the men of Camp Annawan were working in Northern Illinois. Photographs came from a file in the National Archives.