THE STATE PARKS
CCC enrollees built the bones of South Carolina's state park
system. Aiken, Barnwell, Cheraw, Chester, Givhans Ferry,
Greenwood, Hunting Island, Kings Mountain, Lee, Myrtle Beach,
Oconee, Paris Mountain, Poinsett, Sesquicentennial, and Table
Rock were all carved, dug, and laid by hand during the
CCC years.
They cleared trails. They built picnic shelters from local stone.
They put up bathhouses, dam spillways, and ranger cabins that are
still standing. Kings Mountain alone took years of CCC labor to
shape from raw woods into a working park.
Hunting Island, where the lighthouse looks out over the Atlantic,
was largely a CCC build. Myrtle Beach State Park, before the
highway came through and the boardwalks went up, was CCC ground
first.
THE FORESTS & THE SOIL
Francis Marion National Forest took the brunt of
the hurricane of 1893 and never fully recovered. CCC crews
replanted across the forest. They built fire towers, cut access
roads, and dug ditches in the swamps for drainage. The forest you
see today, the one Hugo nearly leveled in 1989 and that came back
again, started its second life under CCC hands.
In the Upcountry, Sumter National Forest and the
soil conservation districts of the Piedmont got CCC terracing
work, kudzu plantings (which seemed like a good idea at the
time), and erosion control across thousands of farms. The
terraces are still there. So is the kudzu.
On the coast, CCC crews planted dune grass and built beach
protection along the Grand Strand and the Lowcountry barrier
islands. The hurricane prep we're doing now sits on top of work
they started almost a century ago.
