Ratcliff CCC Camp

The camp's work became part of the Davy Crockett National Forest. The Handbook of Texas says a Texas law of 1933 authorized land purchases for the national forests, and President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the purchases on October 15, 1936. It counts 161,842 acres, with 94,481 in Houston County and 67,361 in Trinity County, bordered on the northeast by the Neches River. The forest holds the 45-acre Ratliff Lake, and a campground about a mile west of Ratcliff became a tourist attraction.

What the plaque says

Ratcliff CCC Camp J.H. Ratcliff's 1880s sawmill and village here gave way to major timber industry operations that by the early 1930s had decimated Houston County's densest virgin forest. As part of federal efforts to restore the nation's natural resources, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp F-4-T was built at this site in 1933-34, and the Davy Crockett National Forest was established in this area in 1935. CCC workers constructed fire towers, built roads, developed an old sawmill pond into a public lake with recreational facilities, and planted about 3,000,000 trees. Ratcliff CCC Camp closed in 1941. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 14 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 35 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Ratcliff — 0.2 mi
• Four C Mill — 0.6 mi
• Allen Chapel Community — 1.1 mi
• Antioch Cemetery — 1.7 mi