5.00 P.M. The news is getting around today that we are going to be shipped to a camp somewhere in Illinois. I don’t put much faith in this.
The trucks are going to town tonight but I ain’t. You have to ride about fifty miles before you get there.
Robert
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Comments from Chris
Since Robert is from Illinois, going there would be very appealing. Especially now that he has been away from home for so long. There actually would be many CCC opportunities for him in the Southern Illinois area where he was from.
Southern Illinois is a heavily forested area which was logged extensively before Robert's time. It may be hard to tell now, but this area was logged to the extent which caused real problems with the environment. Several of the CCC projects dealt with situations like this related to overuse of the land.
When the depression came, falling demand and prices meant entire industries would change. One of the most visible at this time were farmers. Crops prices dropped so much that farming was no longer viable. The logging industry was much in the same situation. The people in Southern Illinois which had depended on the resources provided by the forest found themselves without a reliable source of income. The combination of environmental damage and economic woes made the area ideal for CCC interaction.
There had been some work in Southern Illinois towards making conservation areas. The formation of the CCC provided an avenue to make the Shawnee Forest a reality. Federal money was provided through the CCC program to buy private land in the area and and manpower from CCC enrollees transformed it into parks. The Shawnee Forest continues to grow today through land purchases just like when it started.
I don't have much information on Robert's brothers, but my understanding is the at least one other Fitzgerald brother worked in Giant City State Park. Giant City is a showpiece for CCC work in the area. You can go there today and eat at the Giant City Lodge, a structure built by the CCC.
Here's a short video about that lodge and park. Take a look at the architecture. This seems to be common in other CCC structures I've seen.
Giant City:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlpK7AsARoI
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| Inside Giant City Lodge David Wilson, Flickr |
Good Chicken!!!!
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