Civilian Conservation Corps Camp

Camp S-207, designated SE-207 in 1933, stood one-quarter mile west and two miles south on Farm Island. Its companies included an unidentified Black company from June 27, 1933, to October 22, 1933; Company 796, made up of North Dakotans, from October 23, 1933, to November 1, 1934; and Company 2756 from October 20, 1934, to September 30, 1937. The Civilian Conservation Corps was a federal work-relief program during the Great Depression, and from 1933 to 1942 it provided work for 31,097 jobless men in South Dakota, including about 22,000 enrollees, about 1,700 veterans, 4,554 American Indians, and 2,834 supervisors. The U.S. Army supplied 200-man camps, food, clothing, medical care, pay, and educational, recreational, and religious programs, while the Office of Indian Affairs provided similar services for units on Indian reservations. At this camp, the State Division of Forestry supervised work on the Arikara dam northeast of Pierre and the development of a park on Farm Island. Enrollees built the causeway across the river channel at the head of the island and the dike at the foot, creating Hipple Lake, and built wing dikes to reduce shoreline erosion. They also backsloped a mile of lake shore, built seven miles of road, erected the Boy Scout cabin, Izaak Walton cabin, and Lewis and Clark monument, developed picnic areas, a trap and skeet range, and three golf holes, and operated a 70-acre tree nursery.

South Dakota · United States