The Civilian Conservation Corps

The era between 1929 and 1939 was known as The Great Depression. The stock markets failed, banks failed, and the economy of the United States came to a quick and terrible stop. Hundreds of thousands of people were out of work. Then they became homeless and began to drift across the country trying to find a new life. In Virgin Valley however, there was not much notice of this Great Depression. They had been so poor for so long it was just normal life to them. Many a tired and
hungry family or person walking along the road to someplace they could find work or family, found an hospitable community which offered them meals and water and a resting place as they paused for the evening.

The Federal Government began a series of public work experiments to provide jobs for the masses of people without work. One of these experiments was the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC”s. President Roosevelt established the CCC in 1933. This allowed single men between the ages of 18 and 25 to enlist in work programs to improve America’s public lands, forests, and parks. The CCC camps were run similar to the army only without guns. Camps were placed in an area and men would be brought in to work on public areas. The pay for enlisting in the CCC’s was $1.00 a day and board and room.

In 1934, the CCC’s moved into Bunkerville and established a camp below the Tank hill. It was called Camp # 537 and was under the command of second Lieutenant Charles Malliliew. There were 260 men in the Bunkerville camp. The camp was made up of two large sleeping barracks, each barrack about 35 feet by 75 feet and were constructed of creosote lumber attached to pilings four feet off the ground. There was also a cooking shed and cafeteria, a bath and shower building and a shop building. The CCC camp was active in Bunkerville until 1936 when the camp was moved to Delmues, Nevada, near present day Pioche, Nevada.

The CCC’s also helped the valley by working with the farmers and building flood wings along the south riverbank between the Bunkerville Dam and the town of Bunkerville. They also helped establish water systems for the valley’s culinary water system in the Bunkerville Mountains. They constructed some trails and roads in the Bunkerville mountains and rock dams to control flooding from the mountains into the fields and town of Bunkerville.

There were two eras of CCC’s in the valley. The second era was the result of the aid of Nevada’s US Senator, Pat McCarran, who in 1938, was approached by the farmers of the valley about a tragic flood washing out all the dams and irrigation
canals of Mesquite and Bunkerville, and through his influence, CCC men from the Moapa Valley and St. George, Utah, were sent to Bunkerville to reestablish the irrigation system. The accomplishments of the CCC’s in the valley was not only
the work done on public lands, but several men who came to the valley through the CCC’s married local women and remained in the valley to raise their families. Their contributions brought only good to the people they adopted as their own.