Civilian Conservation Corps and Robbers Cave State Park

The Civilian Conservation Corps set its rules nationally. A junior enrollee had to be between eighteen and twenty-five, unmarried and a citizen, and the Veterans Administration decided who qualified for the separate veteran units. The War Department organized the men, moved them to the work, built and ran the camps and saw to medical care, discipline, schooling and religion, while agencies such as the National Park Service designed the projects. In 1934 Oklahoma had five thousand men in twenty-six camps, and each state park site had at least one unit of about two hundred.

What the plaque says

Civilian Conservation Corps and Robbers Cave State Park Wilburton, Oklahoma This beautiful park was created between 1935 and 1941 by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1825. Members were primarily World War I veterans who had participated in the major battles of that war and two veterans of the Spanish-American War. There were 140 married members with 410 children. These CCC members built Oklahoma's largest Boy Scout camp, erected 24 major creek dams for flood control and increased fishing water, developed a 5,000 acre preserve, planted pine seedlings, built the bathhouse, cabins, trails, a 70-foot observation tower, and a dam which created an 80-acre lake. The company created its own community complete with water, electric light and telephone systems, laundry, barber shop, and ex- change building. CCC members were paid $30 per month, of which $25 was sent home. They also received housing, food, medical, and dental care as well as educational benefits. Members of Company 1825 left a permanent memorial to the service of its members in the form of this beautiful park which serves countless thousands each year. Dedicated to the members of CCC Company 1825 and the three million members who served our nation. April 30, 1988 Oklahoma Civilian Conservation Alumni Association and Oklahoma Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Robbers Cave State Park — steps away
  A sandstone cave in the Sans Bois Mountains north of Wilburton, wrapped in outlaw stories, and the park that Boy Scouts, prison labor and the CCC built around it.
• Tvshkahomma Capitol Museum — 24 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's 1884 brick capitol in the Kiamichi valley, seat of its senate, house and supreme court until statehood, now the Nation's museum and the ground of its Labor Day Festival.

More markers nearby

• Bernard de La Harpe 1719 — 7.2 mi
• Riddle's Station — 7.2 mi
• Mountain Station — 11 mi
• Holloway's Station — 18 mi