Although we will probably never have a complete list of individual CCC efforts in Colorado, the agency kept a variety of statistics on projects at the time. Thanks to a request last week, we’re going to try to recap some of the more visible ones here, but that will be a work in progress! Meanwhile, here’s some general information. (Also see our Projects page.)

According to Director James J. McEntee’s final report, 35,495 Colorado men, out of 57,944 total, were employed here during the program’s 9.5-year duration. They received more than $63.7 million in pay, of which almost $7 million was sent home to benefit their families. Click image to enlarge this summary report, from the National Archives (NARA) at College Park, MD, via Bob Audretsch. An agency-by-agency overview of work in the first three years is here.

Listing camps, as with projects, is also complicated. Although some were stable for years, other camps moved locations or switched designations. Many camps set up “side” or “fly” camps, smaller groups of men settled away from the base temporarily to work on particular projects. Working through these challenges in his three years of research, historian Audretsch has arrived at a total of 125 camps in Colorado over the life of the CCCs. The summary report above estimates an average of 34 camps were active in Colorado at any given time.

In January 1934, the Steamboat Pilot newspaper provided a summary for the first season in 1933:

A total of 289,433 days were devoted to field work during the past summer at the 23 civilian conservation camps in Colorado. The maximum strength of these camps was 4600 men, of which 2800 were enrolled in Colorado, 1300 from Oklahoma, 460 from Texas and 40 from Wyoming. The fieldtime represents the work of 2000 men for a period of 100 days.

Our camp lists on this site are still incomplete. The U.S. Forest Service oversaw more CCC camps in-state and nationwide than any other technical service agency. Our coverage here has so far neglected the 52 forest camps, so we’ll try to get more posted about their work soon. These camps will be featured in Volume 1 of Audretsch’s book.

Colorado Book Coming Soon!

Audretsch, Robert W., “The Civilian Conservation Corps in Colorado, Volume 1” will be published by Dog Ear Publishing by July 2017 and available on Amazon.