SOUTH·DAKOTA
From 1933 to 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps worked across South Dakota. What they left behind is still here. We are picking the work back up.
THE WORK IS STILL STANDING.
South Dakota had a major CCC program. Enrollees built much of the infrastructure at Custer State Park (the largest CCC project in the Black Hills), worked extensively on the Mount Rushmore approach roads, and built Sica Hollow and Sioux Falls infrastructure. CCC crews fought the 1939 fires in the Black Hills, planted millions of trees across the cut-over forests, and built the stone CCC architecture you still see at Sylvan Lake and Iron Mountain Road. The pigtail bridges on the Needles Highway are CCC work.
CAPABLE HANDS. HONEST WORK.
South Dakota remembers what was built by people willing to do it.
A COLLECTIVE OF BUILDERS.
The CCC Boys corps is based in Colleton County, South Carolina. Justin and Jeremy Shearer and their cousin Joe Nettles, grandsons of Joseph Connelly, are building it from home. We do hurricane prep along the coast, shingle recycling out of the Columbia metro, marine apprenticeships in Walterboro, and a software portfolio with AI as the partner. The corps is worker-owned: members draw a steady wage first, then operating costs, then runway, then surplus to the people who made it happen. Not shareholders.
South Carolina is the first chapter. Other states are next, as builders in those places raise their hands. The playbook, curriculum, kit specs, and operating model are all open source under Creative Commons. Anyone can use them. Federated branches share the central infrastructure (a stablecoin-native neobank, a shared apprentice curriculum, a brand built by everyone) but operate locally. No fees. No buy-in. You are a branch, not a franchise.
A CCC BOYS SOUTH DAKOTA BRANCH?
We're building the framework, the technology, the apprenticeship curriculum, and the playbook out in the open. As South Dakota-rooted builders raise their hands, branches form. If this resonates and you'd like to help bring a CCC Boys branch to South Dakota, write us.
WRITE THE CORPS join@cccboys.com