CCC Camps in Bossier Parish, Part 2

 Continued from March 9, 2022

Civilian Conservation Corps, Company 4407 of Haughton, La. from the Official Annual of CCC District E, Fourth Corps Area, 1935

Last week we explored the CCC camps on Barksdale Air Field. Those camps were charged with improvements to the young military reservation, such as creating landing fields and roads out of wilderness and were categorized as “A” (for Army) camps. Though all the Bossier Camps had Barksdale Army Airfield as their officially designated camp location, there were also camps off the Army reservation in Haughton and in Plain Dealing. Let’s look at the work and recreational life of the Haughton camp.

The Haughton CCC camp’s work mission was designated as an “SCS” camp for the new Soil Conservation Service in 1935 when it was established in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This was the era famously known as the “Dust Bowl” days of windblown topsoil drifting from the western great plains across eastern U.S., an extreme demonstration of the soil erosion crisis that also existed on Louisiana farms.

The Bossier SCS company, number 4407/C, was comprised of young men from Louisiana and Florida. The SCS-sponsored camps worked in demonstration projects on private farms to implement scientific principles and practices to improve soil conservation methods, controlling erosion on as much agricultural land as possible. The projects were supervised by the local landowners. This arrangement allowed for Federal assistance toward conservation activities without Federal control, which was especially important in Louisiana, a latecomer among states in welcoming the CCC.

Much of the work in the Haughton camp was digging the drainage ditches as well as contouring the land according to these scientific principles. Ms. Meverlean Moore from the nearby community of Princeton described their work in oral history interviews:

“All this [private] land back here, they would keep all the underbrush cut. And they laid terraces where the forest could hold moisture for the trees. And they had dips where they dipped cows in the oil to keep the ticks off them. Then the cows would roam all in the woods everywhere but the old ticks wouldn’t get on them. Those pretty berry vines, we would just all go over there and pick berries because there was no underbrush. But they only did that on the Sandidge place. They did not do that on other places, because Sandidge is the one that let them build that camp. They had a CCC pond that is still back there.”

She also remembered another advantage to the camp that helped her family eat better: “during the CCC camp my stepfather got acquainted with the cook at the camp, it was right there on Highway 80 and he would hang around in the kitchen with the cook and he would give him gallon buckets of sausage and whole sticks of bologna and a lot of little things [that] would help out at home.” In addition to berries and plenty of cured meat to eat, the Haughton camp had fresh vegetables from bountiful gardens that the young men planted. They were the pride of the camp and one of the first spots shown to visitors. According to the 1937 District Annual, the Haughton camp overwhelmingly won official competitions as the best garden.

The most significant contribution of the Haughton CCC camp to Ms. Moore’s life, perhaps, is that she married one of the CCC young men, who was from Tennessee. Anecdotally, it was not uncommon for young women in local communities to see marriage to a CCC out-of-towner as a way out of their own small town. Ms. Meverlean remembered, the CCC “pay was $20.00 to the young man and $20.00 to [his] parents to help them out. So after we got married, we lived out of $20.00 dollars but the other $20.00 had to keep going to his parents. Then the baby came along, but we still lived [on that $20.00 but] … $2.50 would buy everything you would need because everything else was in the garden.”

Another purpose of the CCC camps was education for the young men. Their work schedule left time for academic class room instruction, with the elimination of illiteracy being the foremost goal and each member being able to sign their name to payroll as the first objective. Coursework toward a diploma was also provided at the camp. There was time for time “off” too, though recreation could be serious business. The camp had its own volleyball and basketball courts and competed in sports, its chief competitors the African American camps on Barksdale and Keithville in neighboring Caddo Parish.

The young men of the Haughton camp also learned first aid. Being by the important U.S. Highway 80 the camp became essentially a first aid station for the public, and provided medical assistance following highway accidents. For the men’s own medical needs, each camp had a medical doctor. The camp’s most serious setback was an influenza epidemic in 1936 that sent 60 enrollees to bed at one time and killed 5 men. A mumps outbreak later that year sent as many as 33 to bed at one time but thankfully did not result in any deaths.

To learn more about CCC Camps in Bossier and surrounding parishes, please visit us in the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City. If you have any information, stories or photos about the Bossier Parish CCC Camps, we would love to see them or to copy them, with permission, to add to the History Center’s research collection. For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok,

Article by: Pam Carlisle