The source of the following excerpted text is McMahon, Eileen M. and Karamanski, Theodore J. 2002. Time and the River: A History of the St. Croix. National Park Service, Omaha, NE.
The Depression and the New Deal programs of Franklin Roosevelt laid the groundwork that would help transform the north woods and the St. Croix Valley into a vacationland and marked the beginning of federal involvement in the fate of the river. With so many Americans unemployed and the private sector of the economy severely shaken, Roosevelt sought ways to employ people using the resources of the federal government. Among his most noteworthy programs were the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). These programs helped establish the trend for greater government involvement in preserving and protecting the St. Croix River and its tributaries, its forests, and facilitating the development of recreation.
Wisconsin quite early in its history had recognized problems associated with the depletion of its forests, and in 1867, the legislature formed a commission to assess the state's forest reserves.
Wisconsin was thus poised to take full advantage of New Deal conservation programs. The CCC built twelve camps in its national forests, twelve in its state forests, and eight in its state parks. The state employed more than ninety-two thousand workers in the nine years it existed.
The main objective of CCC programs in the valley was, of course, reforestation and conservation. The young "CC boys," as they were called, built fire roads and lookout towers, which finally helped end the ravage of fires that had swept through the area in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Once the fires were brought under control, the forests had the chance to recover. The CCC then planted scores of trees from the millions of seedlings they grew in their own nurseries. Forest experts were enlisted to provide advice on location and type of soil to plant them in.
An example of charred cutover land returned to verdant forests was the handiwork of Camp Riverside. Shortly before the company arrived a fire had swept through fifteen hundred acres in Burnett County. The inexperienced young CCC men had a big job ahead of them. For the next six years they cleared debris and planted nearly 2,500,000 Jack, Norway, White Pine, and Spruce trees. They built seventy-five miles of fire roads, and laid 107 miles of fireproof telephone lines to the Burnett and Washburn County fire protection districts, as well as connecting lines to forestry units elsewhere in the state.
In addition to forestry programs, fish propagation and river and stream improvements were among the more popular programs of the CCC. One of the legacies left by the logging era was dozens of streams and rivers along the St. Croix, including the St. Croix itself, were filled with silt when the forest was gone and nothing was left to hold the soil in place. The banks of rivers had also been severely eroded by increased rainwater runoff and from log drives. Many lakes had been so filled in by silt that they became more like swamps and muskegs. Alder took root where once there had been blue water. Back in the nineteenth century many hunters and trappers had reconciled themselves to the inevitability of the disappearance of game. Fishermen, however, had fully expected their sport to continue unabated after the forests had been logged over and lands turned to farms. When fish numbers began to decline in the nineteenth century throughout Wisconsin, there was an outcry to do something about it. Unfortunately, early stocking practices were not carefully considered. In 1881, carp were introduced into rivers and streams in southern Wisconsin because they were able to survive in warm and semi-stagnant water. The carp, however, bred quickly and made any future efforts in promoting more desirable species difficult. By 1935, the state began to hire men to clean out the carp and expanded native fish hatcheries. Inexperienced volunteers, however, dumped untold numbers of fry into the waters where most died. With the assistance of the CCC the Wisconsin Conservation Commission then began the practice of allowing fry to mature and released them under more careful supervision. The St. Croix Valley benefited from these efforts.
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