Civilian Conservation Corps Company 2896

The camp was meant for Bachman Lake. In mid-July 1935 the National Park Service moved it to White Rock, reportedly to get sanitary sewage and other facilities. Company 2896 opened on August 8, and its first recruits arrived on August 14, 120 from Collin County, followed the next day by 69 from Dallas County. They built rip-rap retaining walls, planted 75 acres of pecan seedlings at Norbuck Park and dredged about ninety acres of silted land with a hydraulic boat, the Joe E. Lawther, which sank in November 1937 and was repaired.

What the plaque says

Civilian Conservation Corps Company 2896 Soon after President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, he established what would become the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal program designed to address hardships during the Great Depression. In addition to providing wages, it trained young men in building trades and other skills through public improvement projects. It was administered jointly by the Army and select federal agencies, such as the National Park Service. On July 10, 1935, Army Captain Tom B. Martin began supervising construction of facilities near this site for a local camp. Designated SP-55-TX, it began with several frame buildings, including barracks, a mess hall, a blacksmith shop, and a combination woodworking, repair and storage facility. About 200 recruits from Collin and Dallas counties soon arrived to begin their work, which included improvements to the lake, planting more than 1,500 trees, and the construction of trails, picnic grounds, shelters, latrines and a lily pond at the park. Enrollees also completed projects at Bachman Lake. Among their works here were buildings designed by local architect M.A. Burke at Doran's Point, Big Thicket, Sunset Hill, Winfrey Point and Dixon's Bay. Over a seven-year period, approximately 3,000 youths were assigned to the camp. In February 1942, after the U.S. entered World War II, the site transferred to the Army, which used it for induction and training. In 1944-45, the U.S. held approximately 300 German prisoners of war here. Later, Southern Methodist University used the site for student housing, but the buildings were soon sold or demolished. Today, evidence of the CCC's work to build this park can still be found in the rustic design of its historical features. They serve as reminders of the lasting contributions of the New Deal agency. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 4.4 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 4.6 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 5.7 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 5.8 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• White Rock Dam, Reservoir and Park — 1.2 mi
• Reinhardt Elementary School — 1.4 mi
• Zion Lutheran Church — 2.9 mi
• William B. Lipscomb Elementary School — 2.9 mi