Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Parker State Park

The Handbook of Texas says the law creating the Civilian Conservation Corps forbade discrimination by race, color or creed, yet the roughly 200,000 Black enrollees were often segregated, especially in the South. Company 3807 at Fort Parker was one such unit, all African American. The Handbook says much of the work was done by hand and puts completion of the 423-foot limestone and concrete dam in 1939. Land for the park came from the city of Mexia and three individual owners in 1935 and 1936, and the park opened to the public on May 1, 1941.

What the plaque says

Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Parker State Park In August 1935, construction of a state park began here on the former town site of Springfield under the direction of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The group assigned to build Fort Parker State Park was Company 3807(C), an African American CCC Camp. From 1935 to 1942, the park company constructed park buildings, roads and facilities, erected a dam across the Navasota River, and reconstructed old Fort Parker. Located nearby, old Fort Parker was rebuilt in preparation for a Texas Centennial observance in 1936, and was the first of the CCC projects completed. The dam that created Lake Fort Parker was concluded by 1938 and required breaking and hauling rock for cement, digging out the dam footings, spillway, and wing walks, and pouring cement for the dam. Creating the park facilities included clearing and building five miles of roads, constructing an activity center / bath house, drinking fountains, and cement picnic tables. Former Texas Governor Pat Neff dedicated Fort Parker State Park in May 1941, and declared it open to the public. Company 3807(C) was transferred out of the area in 1942 after completing several complex tasks over a span of almost seven years. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Fort Parker — 2.3 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 3.4 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 15 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.

More markers nearby

• Zada Jane Sanders Kelly — 3.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Groesbeck — 4.6 mi
• Home County of Lafayette Lumpkin Foster — 4.8 mi
• Mexia Oil Boom — 5.0 mi