As part of New Deal efforts to provide unemployed workers with jobs on public projects, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U. S. Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps in March 1933. Because decades of lumbering had affected Bastrop County's "Lost Pines" forest, it became a prime candidate for the CCC's reforestation program and a logical site for a park. Two hundred recruits of Company #1805 arrived in Bastrop in November 1933 and, with the help of Austin architect Arthur Fehr and a group of local experienced men, worked to create a state recreational park in the forest. Using native materials in the National Park Service Rustic style, they built park structures whose central refectory especially reflects the CCC's craftsmanship. A second company, #1811, arrived in November 1934 to assist with reforestation and development of nearby Buescher State Park. The CCC also made native wood furniture for this and other Texas state parks and built roads, trails, bridges, and small lakes. Work at Bastrop ended with the park substantially complete in 1939.