Building, honoring and mending

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.