In 1935, as the Great Depression and severe drought gripped the country, Waubay National Wildlife Refuge was established amid efforts to protect both people and natural resources. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps as a New Deal program that put thousands of young men to work, and local crews at Waubay constructed buildings, dikes, and fences, planted trees, added landscaping, built the stone picnic shelter, completed the observation tower, and removed hundreds of drought-killed trees for fence posts used there and at other refuges. The hardship of the era was intensified by dust storms such as the 1934 "black blizzard" in South Dakota, after drought had dried wetlands, grasses, and other vegetation until the soil turned to dust and blew away. In South Dakota, the typical CCC enrollee was under 20 years old, had not graduated from high school or held a job, and came from a family whose income averaged less than $40 per month; of the $30 earned each month, $25 was sent home. During the 1930s, concern also grew over dwindling waterfowl flocks in the Prairie Pothole Region, and in 1934 Congress passed the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act, known as the Duck Stamp Act. Even during the Depression, Americans bought 635,000 one-dollar hunting stamps, and the money funded the purchase of refuges for migratory waterfowl and other wildlife, making Waubay National Wildlife Refuge part of that conservation legacy, which continues through the Duck Stamp program.