Human Conservation Programs at Catoctin Mountain Park: A Special Resource Study

Sirna, Angela

In 2011, the Organization of American Historians (OAH), at the behest of the National Park Service (NPS), published Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service. Among the twelve recommendations the consultants made, Finding #9 "Stewardship and Interpretation of Agency History" serves as both the purpose and need for this Special Resource Study on Human Conservation Programs at Catoctin Mountain Park. The authors charge that the NPS, despite its vast institutional archives, considers its own story as somehow separate from the history it is mandated with preserving or interpreting. Staff and historians working at Catoctin Mountain Park have made progress in documenting the area’s history, including the NPS’s role. This study, however, brings both the area’s pre-park history and agency history together using one framework. It encourages park staff to use this framework to direct future research initiatives, preservation, and management strategies, while also enriching interpretation and public engagement. "Human conservation" is an idea that originated in the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century and loosely parallels the natural conservation movement that created the national park system during the same period. Shaped by land economists, politicians, and recreation advocates, the guiding principle behind human conservation is that human beings are a vital, national resource (like trees, soil, and water) that should and can be carefully managed to reach their highest potential. Catoctin Mountain Park serves as an important case study in charting these programs over the twentieth century from the removal of local farm families to create a park in 1936 to the opening of the nation's very first Job Corps Center in 1965 and the installation of a pilot Youth Conservation Corps camp in 1971. State and federal officials began investigating the Catoctin Mountain area in rural Frederick County, Maryland during the throes of the Great Depression as a possible location for a Recreational Demonstration Area (RDA). Their chief aim was to retire submarginal land into a park area and resettle the local population to better farms. However, the agencies involved in the park development project never developed a plan to resettle these families, exacerbating an already difficult situation. Despite this disruption, many of these families remained in Frederick and Washington counties and continued to farm. Beginning in 1936, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) hired a number of former residents and area locals to construct the park, making it a uniquely local project. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp in 1939, which brought young men between the ages of 16 and 21 from adjacent states to provide manpower for project work. The CCC remained at Catoctin until 1941. Together with the WPA, they transformed the landscape from a collection of farmsteads and timber lots to a park complete with roads, trails, picnic areas, and three organized cabin camps. The cabin camps provided low-cost recreational opportunities to children and their families from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Before World War II, the Maryland League for Crippled Children, Salvation Army, Boy and Girl Scouts, and Federal Employees Council rented these cabin camps. In January 1965, Catoctin opened the very first Job Corps Conservation Center (JCCC) in the country. Congress established the Job Corps program when it passed the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. This piece of legislation was key to President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty. The Job Corps program was modeled after the CCC and it is no coincidence that the Job Corps built the new center on the foundations of the old CCC camp in the area now referred to as Round Meadow, which the NPS continues to use for various administrative functions. However, the two programs were very different. First, administrators purposely integrated the Job Corps during the Civil Rig

Human Conservation Programs at Catoctin Mountain Park: A Special Resource Study

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