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On September 21st at 6PM author and historian Marty Podskoch from East Hampton, will give a Power Point presentation on his new book, Connecticut Civilian Conservation Corps Camps: History, Memories and Legacy at the Litchfield Community Center.

This year is the 89th anniversary of the founding of the Civilian Conservation Corps. It began on March 31, 1933 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program to relieve the poverty and unemployment of the Depression. The US Army supervised the camps which had approx. 200 men each. The first year 13 camps were set up in these Connecticut towns’ state parks & forests: West Cornwall, Housatonic Meadows; Niantic, Military Reservation; Eastford, Natchaug; Haddam, Cockaponset; Union, Nipmuck; New Fairfield, Squantz Pond; Cobalt, Meshomasic; Voluntown, Pachaug; Thomaston, Black Rock; East Hartland, Tunxis; Clinton, Cockaponset; West Goshen, Mohawk; and Torrington, Paugnut (Burr Pond). The Army Government Dock in New London was the supply depot for all the CT camps.

In the following years these eight camps were added: Barkhamsted, American Legion State Forest; East Hampton, Salmon River; Danbury, Wooster Mountain; Stafford Springs, Shenipsit; Portland, Meshomasic; Windsor (Poquonock), Experiment Station Land; Kent, Macedonia Brook, and Madison, Cockaponset.

Men 18 - 25 (with families on relief) enrolled for 6 months and worked a 40-hour week for $30/mo. The government sent $25 a month home and the boys received $5 spending money. The boys got good food, uniforms, shelter, and medical care. At first they lived in tents; later they lived in wooden buildings.

Workers built trails, roads, campsites, dams, stocked fish, built & maintained fire towers, observer’s cabins & telephone lines, fought fires, & planted millions of trees. The CCC disbanded in 1942 due to the need for men in WW II.

After the presentation Marty Podskoch will have his new Conn. CCC book available for sale and signing and also his eleven books on the Catskills, Adirondack mountains and his two new travel book, Connecticut 169 Club: Your Passport and Guide to Exploring Connecticut and Rhode Island 39 Club. In 2021 he published a book on the Rhode Island CCC Camps. Presently Podskoch is conducting research on the CCC camps in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.