Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Lodge

In 1946 Warren Lee, a drama professor at the University of South Dakota, moved a summer theater company into this empty camp, and the Black Hills Playhouse has played here since; it helped place this bronze. The 1991 bronze calls Camp Lodge the only CCC camp in the state still intact. The Playhouse's own history now says a single camp building survives, the snack bar and office at the head of the grounds. The men of SP-4 built Center Lake's dam, the Sylvan Lake cabins and roads on the Needles Highway.

What the plaque says

Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Camp SP-4 (DSP-2): Lodge: located in the buildings seen here. Companies: 2755--7/16/34-10/21/35 795--10/29/35-1/13/36 1793--4/27/36-7/30/42 The Civilian Conservation Corps was a federal relief program during 1933-1942 that gave jobless men work renovating abused lands. The Army built 48 200-man camps in South Dakota and provided food, clothing, medical care, pay and programs of education, recreation and religion for 23,709 enrollees (single men aged 17-25 who sent $25 of their $30 wage to their families) and war veterans. Camps and work projects were supervised by another 2834 men. The Office of Indian Affairs ran smaller units for 4554 American Indians. Camp Lodge is the only camp in the state that is still intact. The Camp was part of the national CCC program to build more areas for tourists. Supervised by Custer State Park and The National Park Service, CCs worked in several areas of Custer State Park. They built Center Lake dam, camp, bathhouse, latrines and parking. At Sylvan Lake, they installed sewer, water, electrical and telephone systems; erected 17 cabins, store, restaurant, filling station and built a camp, picnic area, bathing facilities and road network. Enrollees installed two water systems and fence near game lodge; built roads and bridges on Needles Highway, Mills Cutoff and at Remington. They completed Grizzly Bear campground; erected 3 1/2 miles of big game fence and worked at the park museum and zoo. Erected in 1991 by CCC Alumni, the South Dakota State Historical Society, Black Hills Playhouse and Custer State Park

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Needles Highway — 3.6 mi
  Fourteen miles that Governor Peter Norbeck laid out on foot and horseback through the granite spires, threading a tunnel eight feet wide.
• State Game Lodge — 3.8 mi
  The lodge where Calvin Coolidge spent the summer of 1927, fishing for trout, dedicating Mount Rushmore, and deciding not to run again.
• Mount Rushmore National Memorial — 5.2 mi
  Four faces blasted out of a sacred mountain by 400 workers in fourteen years, with a Jefferson that had to be dynamited off and a hall of records never finished.
• Black Elk Peak — 6.6 mi
  The highest summit in the Black Hills, renamed in 2016 for an Oglala holy man after carrying, for 150 years, the name of the general who attacked a Sicangu camp in 1855.

More markers nearby

• The Badger Hole — 3.7 mi
• The Father of Mount Rushmore — 4.3 mi
• The Pigtail Bridges — 4.4 mi
• Gutzon Borglum — 5.1 mi