Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - State Fair Grounds

The V in Company 4725V marks a veterans' company, and the place such men held in the Corps came out of the second Bonus March. On May 11, 1933, Roosevelt's Executive Order 6129 opened enrollment to 25,000 veterans of the World War. Eleanor Roosevelt visited the marchers' camp unaccompanied that month, and the march was defused with an offer of CCC jobs at Fort Hunt, Virginia, which most accepted. Veterans were spared the rule that enrollees be unmarried and under twenty-five, so men who had served in 1917 and 1918 were building stock dams around Huron twenty years later.

What the plaque says

Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Camp SCS-4 (Huron): located on SE corner of State Fair Grounds. Companies: 2770--10/31/35-10/7/37; 4725V--10/7/37-8/15/41. 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 super- visors. 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. Camp personnel worked on private land under supervision of the Soil Conservation Service. North Dakota enrollees of Company 2770 and WWI veterans of Company 4725V developed the 190,000-acre Wolsey-Shue Creek erosion project (the first in SD) and the Karnstrum demonstration farm 3 1/2 miles NE of Wolsey. They used shelterbelts, cover crops, rough tillage and strip farming to control erosion, and built stock dams to improve grazing utilization. They built Third Street Dam in Huron, Lake Dudley Dam near Hitchcock, and Lake Dakota Dam and Boy Scout Camp near Miller. Tours showing results aided in organization of soil conservation districts in Beadle. Clark and Spink Counties. Erected in 1990 by CCC Alumni, the South Dakota State Historical Society, the State Department of Transportation and the Soil Conservation Service.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Where Does the West Begin? — steps away
• W. Glenn Sloan, Engineer Man of Vision — 1.6 mi
• Wolsey: A Crossroad of the Heartland / Wolsey Notables — 12 mi
• Colonel W. H. Nobles — 18 mi