Civilian Conservation Corps, Ravenna, Nebraska

In July 1934 the Kearney Daily Hub reported that a Civilian Conservation Corps camp would be developed at Ravenna, at the state lake site, and by August young men were at work. The camp began in tents, with regulation army barracks promised if it lasted, and thirteen buildings went up, among them barracks, a mess hall and a bath house, from about seven carloads of lumber at roughly $15,000. That August the crew built a brush-and-earth dam on the Chick Kriha farm south of town, and twenty-five other farms asked for dams.

What the plaque says

Civilian Conservation Corps Ravenna, Nebraska From 1934 to 1939, Companies 2741 and 2732 of the Civilian Conservation Corps occupied a camp near this site. Barracks housed about 200 men, ages 18 to 25, who built soil conservation dams and planted shelterbelts on nearby farms. The camp moved to Broken Bow in 1939 and the buildings were dismantled. CCC camps across Nebraska and the nation provided employment and training for thousands of young men during the Depression. Ravenna Genealogical and Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rowe Sanctuary — 24 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.

More markers nearby

• Post South Loup Fork "Fort Banishment" — steps away
• Solon H. Borglum "Sculptor of the Prairie" — 9.4 mi
• Austin — 13 mi
• B-17 Crash, 1943 — 17 mi