Camp Cordell Hull

Tennessee's first Civilian Conservation Corps company set up its headquarters here in 1933, near Limestone Cave. Enrollees signed up for at least six months, and few stayed past a year or two; they earned thirty dollars a month, twenty-five of which went to their families or was held until discharge. The state's camps were segregated: of forty companies in the district, only three were Black companies, one of veterans and two of juniors. The state's camp count peaked at forty-six in July 1937.

What the plaque says

Camp Cordell Hull Following the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 15, 1933, as an unemployment relief measure, a group of two hundred enrollees of Company 1455 began camp construction at this site on May 27. Soon Company 1472 arrived and the CCC boys were involved in various conservation projects. Named in honor of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, it was one of the last of the 77 camps in the state to close when the program ended in 1942.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 3.4 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.
• Jonesborough Historic District — 11 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 12 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.
• Roan Mountain and Carvers Gap — 14 mi
  The saddle on the Tennessee-North Carolina line where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Roan Highlands' grass balds, with Catawba rhododendron gardens, rare spruce-fir forest and the site of the Cloudland Hotel.

More markers nearby

• Blue Ridge Pottery — 5.4 mi
• Unicoi County / Town of Erwin — 5.4 mi
• Andre Michaux — 7.3 mi
• Tipton-Haynes Historic Site — 7.3 mi