This coming Tuesday, Sept. 12 at 1 p.m. in the Deane Center lobby at 104 Main Street in Wellsboro, the free Golden Afternoons program for men and women ages 55 and older will feature Pennsylvania Lumber Museum Curator Joshua Fox giving a fascinating PowerPoint presentation on the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which is celebrating its 90^th Anniversary this year, and the impact the CCC had on this area. Light refreshments will be provided.

The presentation will look at the CCC in Pennsylvania through the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum’s collection of photographs and artifacts.

On April 5, 1933, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6101, which established the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federally funded public works relief program and appointed a director.

By April 17, 1933, the first CCC Camp, NF-1 Camp Roosevelt, was established in George Washington National Forest in Virginia. One week later, on April 24, 1933, the second CCC Camp, ANF-1 Camp Col. Landers, was opened in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest.

The CCC put unemployed young men to work during the Great Depression. About 600,000 World War I veterans and 2.6 million unmarried men, ages 17 to 28 that could not find jobs enlisted in the  CCC between April 17, 1933 and June 30, 1942  when it ended thanks to the end of the Great Depression and the start of World War II.

The CCC would prove to be one of the most popular of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs. Enrollment would peak at 505,782 in about 2,900 camps, nationwide in August 1935 with approximately 3 million enrollees during the 9 years of the CCC.

The men were given a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes to wear and were paid $1 a day in return for the work they did. The projects they completed had environmental benefits. Called dollar-a-day boys, they logged trees and planted new ones, built walks and dams and a network of public roadways and upgraded or built hundreds of state parks across the country. including Leonard Harrison and Colton Point state parks, near Wellsboro.

Pennsylvania had 152 CCC camps, second only to California, and nearly 200,000 men who enlisted in the CCC. Many of the camps were located in north central Pennsylvania.

A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (BA American History and Political Science) and Duquesne University (MA Public History), Fox has been employed as the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum curator since 2019.

He has almost 20 years of experience as a museum professional, having been employed at several Pennsylvania museums, including Soldiers and Sailors Museum in Pittsburgh and the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia.

He also worked at National Park sites. At the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site in Williston, North Dakota, a recreated fur trading post operated by the American Fur Company from 1830-1867, he was employed as a museum tech to catalog artifacts.

At the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook, N.Y. he worked as a museum tech performing historic housekeeping duties at Lindenwald, the home of 8th U. S. President Martin Van Buren from 1839 until Van Buren’s death in 1862.

Fox also was employed as a park guide assisting visitors and providing tours at

at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, PA. This park includes Independence Hall, Congress Hall, and the Supreme Court, as well as the Liberty Bell, the Second Bank Portrait Gallery, and the Ben Franklin Museum.

The Lumber Museum has a CCC section in its main exhibit and the CCC built Chestnut Cabin on museum grounds.

Anyone interest in donating to the museum’s collection of items and artifacts relating to PA’s Lumber Heritage, the Civilian Conservation Corps, or the History of PA’s Forests, can contact the curator at joshuafox@pa.gov.

For more information about Golden Afternoons, call the Deane Center at 570-724-6220.