As part of “The West Where We Are” series the library presents a lecture on the Civilian Conservation Corps by Ivar Nelson and Patricia Hart.
Ivar Nelson is a former Director of the University of Idaho Press. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya, and a Foreign Service Officer in Africa and to the United Nations. He has published books and magazines (including Palouse Journal), directed the University of Idaho Press, and written Mining Town: The Photographic Collection of T.N. Barnard and Nellie Stockbridge with Patricia Hart. He co-founded Bookpeople of Moscow and is currently active with the revitalization of the Kenworthy Theater in Moscow.
Patricia Hart is a social and cultural historian with a focus on change in times of national crisis and the role of media in that process. Her most recent book, A Home for Every Child (University of Washington Press), addresses the 19th century origins and practice of non-relative adoption in the United States. Previous books include the edited Women Writing Women (University of Nebraska Press), and, with Ivar Nelson, Mining Town: The Photographic Collection of T.N. Barnard and Nellie Stockbridge (University of Washington Press).
In the late 30s, the Civilian Conservation Corps, popularly known as the CCC, built the Ski Round House on “Baldy” and several ski runs during the founding years of the Sun Valley ski resort. Working out of Camp Warm Springs northwest of Ketchum, the CCC “boys” also built the Ketchum Ranger Station, campgrounds, and various roads such as the one along Trail Creek.
They were the local manifestation of a three-million-man program, the most popular and longest lived of the New Deal programs initiated by the Roosevelt administration to mitigate the impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s. In all, 86,775 men worked for the CCC in Idaho during the 10 years from 1933 – 1942. The CCC changed their lives and the vitality of Idaho’s economy and society.
Nelson and Hart will show how the legacy of the CCC reflects not only the history of the Great Depression, but sheds light on the very contemporary issues of fighting wild fires, use of federal land, and national service.
