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| Detail from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Washington, DC |
The CCC built the stone
road bridge in Kentucky's Pine Mountain State Park.
The park had been established by the state in 1924, in Bell County
Kentucky. It was not until the CCC came
to the park after 1933 that the gatehouse and other roads and buildings were
made. The CCC provided the design and
construction of a gatehouse in the rustic style. The CCC completed a custodian’s house,
service buildings, a ranger station, a water reservoir and pump house, roads,
campgrounds, and parking areas.
In his youth in the Hudson River Valley Franklin Roosevelt
came to appreciate the value of woods and pastures. He had a close friend that farmed in the
community.
After he became sick with polio Franklin Roosevelt found the
water at Warm Springs, Georgia to be helpful to restore his body and
spirit. After others tried the Warm
Springs water, he showed them how to benefit from moving and exercising in the
water. He was their informal doctor
telling them what they could do to get better.
One of the things he urged was to be happy; that a happy attitude was a
part of improving. He had an unusual
way about him that exuded confidence. He
was a person that people wanted to be around.
John James Audubon studied wildlife and painted birds. He spent time at Louisville with William
Croghan and he visited Locust Grove. He
studied and sketched wildlife at the Falls of the Ohio. Later he moved to the town of Henderson,
Kentucky.
His detailed study led to the publishing in 1838 of the
four-volume set entitled The Birds of
America The set was renowned in
Europe and across the world.
When the CCC was restoring damaged woods and pastures the
work took them to wide ranging locations.
It ended up that the New Deal agencies planted 3 billion trees. The CCC was at the forefront of the tree planting effort.
When Franklin Roosevelt was interested in getting the
world’s longest cave set aside as a National Park he kept at the task. Once
the concept was to be implemented it was the CCC that took the idea from idea
on paper to a place to get the park working for the community. The enrollees surveyed trails in and out of
the cave. They quarried stone. They
built trails. Today that park in
Edmonson County, Kentucky is one of the jewels in the National Park System.
It turned out that Franklin Roosevelt had many ideas about
places that would be beneficial to build and many of those places were in
Kentucky.
There was no place in Kentucky honoring the legacy of John
James Audubon. Franklin Roosevelt had it
in mind to get a state park established to display Audubon’s art in a beautiful
natural setting. Two of the New Deal
agencies, the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps
moved to build the roads and buildings of the park in Henderson County,
Kentucky. That park stands today
honoring the art of John James Audubon and serving as a place of natural beauty.
Within the park there is a statue of a
workman. That statue honors the enrollees
of the CCC.
The Audubon State Park is a tribute to the tenacious work of
Franklin Roosevelt to get the park built and running. It seems fitting that the park was built on
a site where John James Audubon studied wildlife. It also seems fitting that the labor of the
CCC enrollees resulted in the park that Audubon would have felt was a wildlife
sanctuary keeping a place for birds of Kentucky to thrive.
The CCC slogan was “We can take it.” The enrollees showed that they could do more
than it was believed that they could do.
“We can take it.” Sometimes the work of someone benefits others
long after the original work. Even badly
broken things or people can be brought back by the process of redemption. People do better when they work
together. It is about community.
