Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Mystic

Camp F-1 stood on this spot, and its men largely built it themselves. With Camp F-5 at Rochford they set up a sawmill and cut the lumber for both camps from the pine they were thinning. Four companies held it from June 1933 to January 1938, surveying the forest's boundaries and cutting firebreaks and roads. One word sets this bronze apart from its siblings, which cast recreation area development among the Forest Service's tasks; Mystic's casts reclamation, probably a slip somewhere between the text and the casting.

What the plaque says

Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Camp F-1 Mystic: Located at this spot Companies: 760--6/29/33-10/20/34 2753--10/20/34-10/30/35 2763--10/30/35-1/20/36 1790--1/20/36-1/6/38 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 F-1 was part of a national CCC program to renovate forests and build more recreation areas. Work projects, supervised by the USDA Forest Service, included tree thinning, pruning and planting; fire prevention and suppression; rodent, disease and insect control; grazing land improvement and reclamation area development. Enrollees removed dead, diseased, suppressed and excess trees (used for posts, poles and firewood) from hundreds of acres of pine leaving enough trees to produce good quality lumber. They removed flammable debris from forests and nearby areas and quelled forest fires. CCs set up a sawmill in cooperation with Camp F-5 and produced lumber to build both camps. They surveyed forest boundaries; built firebreaks, firetrails, roads and telephone lines (also used by local residents.) Erected in 1991 by CCC Alumni, the South Dakota State Historical Society and the Black Hills National Forest

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1880 Train — 8.4 mi
  A steam excursion on a mining branch line that hauled gear for Mount Rushmore, named for a decade it never ran in by a man who wanted steam to survive.
• Black Elk Peak — 13 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.
• Crazy Horse Memorial — 14 mi
  A Lakota elder's answer to Mount Rushmore, carved for more than seventy years by one family with private money, and still argued over by Crazy Horse's own relatives.
• Mount Rushmore National Memorial — 15 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.

More markers nearby

• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Tigerville — 3.1 mi
• Hill City — 8.5 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Horse Creek — 8.6 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Pactola — 9.4 mi