During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps operated Camp SCS-2, later designated DPE-22 in 1934, in the city park at the southwest corner of Presho. Companies 2756, 758, 2737, and 4726 were stationed there between 1934 and 1938, and a detachment of 2770 from Huron served there in late 1935 and early 1936. From 1933 to 1942, the CCC 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. SCS-2 was a tent camp, though its headquarters, infirmary, mess, and latrine were in wooden buildings. Under the supervision of the U.S. Forest Service in 1934 and the Soil Conservation Service, workers built Byre Dam three miles north of Kennebec, Fate Dam three miles north of Presho, and Brakke Dam five miles east of Presho. These dams created two recreational lakes and the city water supply for Kennebec. The camp's equipment advanced from shovels, wheelbarrows, horse-drawn machines, and a few one-and-one-half-ton trucks in 1934 to graders, loaders, packers, excavators, and several three-ton trucks in 1938.