Historical Marker · No. 519
Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Roubaix
Lawrence County · South Dakota
Erected by CCC Alumni, South Dakota State Historical Society, State Department of Transportation and Black Hills National Forest, 1990
Company 792 came here on June 3, 1933, and with two breaks stayed until October 1941, building the dam that holds Roubaix Lake along with its beach, bathhouse and campground. This 1990 bronze counts the state's corps as 31,097 men, about 22,000 of them young enrollees. Its companion at the Este camp near Nemo, cast a year later for much the same sponsors, counts 23,709 enrollees, and the CCC Museum of South Dakota says only about 31,000 men. Neither total is the settled one.
What the plaque says
Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Camp F-6 (Roubaix): 100 yards N of Lake entrance; W of road. Companies: 792--6/3/33 - 5/15/35; 10/18/35 6/1/40; 10/1/40 - 10/11/41; 2759V - (Detachment from Park Creek)-- 5/15/35 - 10/18/35. The Civilian Conservation Corps was a Federal work-relief program during the Great Depression. From 1933 to 1942, the CCC provided work for 31,097 jobless men in South Dakota -- about 22,000 enrollees (single men aged 17-25); about 1,700 veterans, 4,554 American Indians and 2,834 supervisors. The U. S. Army provided 200-man camps, food, clothing, medical care and pay, and educational, recreational and religious programs. The Office of Indian Affairs provided similar services for units on Indian reservations. The U. S. Forest Service supervised Camp F-6. The work of Company 792 included tree thinning, pruning and planting; fire prevention and suppression; rodent and insect control; grazing land improvement; and recreational development. Enrollees removed dead and diseased growth, built fire trails and removed flammable debris from hundreds of acres. They developed scores of springs, built stock dams and fences, and constructed Roubaix Dam along with a beach, swimming area, bath- house and campground. The detachment of WWI veterans in Company 2759V built residences in Deadwood for the forest supervisor and assistant. Erected in 1990 by CCC Alumni, the South Dakota State Historical Society, the State Department of Transportation and Black Hills National Forest.
Where it stands
44.20818, -103.65381 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Homestake Open Cut & Sanford Lab Visitor Center — 11 miA 1,250-foot pit on Lead's Main Street, the visible top of a gold mine that went down 8,000 feet in 125 years and is a physics laboratory now.
- Mount Moriah Cemetery — 12 miThe hillside where Deadwood moved its dead: Wild Bill and Calamity Jane side by side, Seth Bullock looking at his friend's tower, and the Chinese burner of 1908.
- Deadwood Historic District — 12 miA gold-rush town on treaty land, rebuilt in brick after the 1879 fire and rescued a century later by a vote to let casinos pay for its preservation.
- Spearfish Canyon — 17 miA limestone canyon nineteen miles long whose waterfalls ran dry for most of a century while the Homestake piped their water to its power plants.