Camp Hadley housed young men known as Roosevelt's Tree Army, ages 17 to 25, who came from families with unemployed parents during the Great Depression. They joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and earned one dollar a day for up to 30 days each month, with 25 dollars sent home to their families. As many as 200 workers lived at the site, where the remains of a once thriving community include foundations from a large recreation hall, an incinerator, an administrators cabin, a mess hall, and other buildings. The workers carried responsibilities and received training to make them employable, and their projects included forest preservation, tree planting, mosquito control, soil conservation, irrigation, biological and plant surveys, and other park work, much of it in Cockaponsett State Forest. They also responded to natural disasters such as wildfires, blizzards, and hurricanes. Often ignored by residents of Madison or cast aside because they came from poor families, Hadley's young men became heroes for cleaning up Wall Street after the Hurricane of 1938.