In the fall of 1929, the American stock market crashed and resulted in the Great Depression. It was an era of debilitating poverty and unemployment, and it coincided with the most severe drought in United States history. Farmlands turned to desert. Overworked soil, reduced to a fine powder, was swept up by high winds and seeped into people’s homes through cracks in their windows and walls. During this time of immense scarcity and distress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Emergency Work Act (EWC). The EWC, more commonly known as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), helped provide jobs to unemployed people while preserving the United States’ natural resources, including public lands, forests, and parks. The CCC men lived in military-style camps established across the nation. Perks of the job included three meals a day, a bed to sleep in, and a monthly stipend. In its first year, the CCC provided jobs for about 300,000 unemployed and unmarried men between the ages of 18-25.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and Soil Conservation Service helped provide assistance and guidance to the CCC, and in turn the CCC helped many local farmers. Here in Sterling, the CCC was established in 1939. The CCC men helped farmers within a 20 miles radius of Sterling establish grazing control and contour furrows on range land; construct stock ponds and dams; remove and construct fences; and plant trees, shrubs, and grass. They also helped with water system treatment, strip cropping, terracing, and more. The federal government paid the CCC men’s pages, and the farmers who benefitted from CCC programs helped finance the cost of the work itself.

Conversation surveys and soils maps made by the Sterling CCC technical service covered a total of 80,089 acres. They also covered 43,107 acres of range surveys. Plans were made to help 61 farms in the area, but the CCC men were not able to complete all of the work before the Sterling CCC closed at the end of the year in 1941. Thankfully, the plans they had drawn up were still made available for local farmers to use. Before its closing, there were 104 men enrolled. Protests were filed against closing the work program through the Sterling CHamber of Commerce, but they failed. Government representatives then ordered the transfer of CCC men in Sterling to other CCC camps across the nation. However, the CCC ended nationally not long after, in June 1942.