During the Great Depression, the Day Lake CCC Camp became part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps, a major conservation and jobs program created to provide work and restore the environment. The camp was one of twenty established in Minnesota, and in 1933 its first enrollees were African Americans from Kansas and Missouri serving in Company 786, making it the only camp in the forest to host African Americans in the segregated CCC program. Across the country, CCC crews, often called the "tree army," planted more than two billion trees in nine years and also built roads, prepared sites, surveyed lakes, wildlife, and streams, and carried out rodent control. Day Lake was one of only six camps that continued after the CCC era, and during World War II, from 1943 to 1945, it became one of four camps in the Chippewa National Forest that housed German prisoners of war. As Allied forces advanced in North Africa, prisoners were sent to the U.S. and at Day Lake they worked in local sawmills and for private logging firms, with their wages going to the U.S. Army; guards were present, security was minimal, and few escapes were reported. Remains of the camp survive on both sides of Highway 38, including a concrete shower on the west side and, east of the highway up a hill, an outdoor stone stairway and chimney from the camp mess hall, though much of the site was later replanted with red pine.