A Very OK Podcast
Episode 36: “The Birth of the State Park System”
May 21, 2024
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. And Bob, it’s getting warmer out there. It’s time to be outside. And we’ve been out in our yard doing some gardening, getting some sod laid down. But, it’s beautiful in the state of Oklahoma, except for the tornadoes that we’ve been having, which have been pretty terrible. But, how are things in your world?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Oh, Trait, starting out great. Tomorrow, I will fly out to see my grandsons in Denver, and so we’ll play outside there. But, like you say, gardening. I’m tying up tomatoes yesterday. I already have a bunch of tomatoes on the vines. And of course, lawn care always keeps me going. But a little golf outside, and I like the seasons when you don’t have to wear long pants. That’s one of the things I like about retirement. I tell people, they say, how do you like retirement? I said, well, I’m still working, you know, taking on too many projects, but I don’t have to shave if I don’t want to. I don’t have set the alarm unless I have something that has to be done, and I don’t have to wear long pants. So, anyway, those are good things in retirement.
Thompson: Well, in the words of Lyle Lovett, in one of his songs he put out a couple of years ago, “Pants Is Overrated.” So, and if you haven’t heard that song, you need to go listen to it. But he’s exactly right, pants is overrated. So it’s great to be with you, as always.
And I want to bring our guest into the conversation. We have Dr. Matthew Pearce with us, and I’ll read some of your bio. Very accomplished person. He was named the state historian for the Oklahoma Historical Society in February of 2024. His duties include providing expertise and scholarly perspectives to ensure an accurate interpretation of Oklahoma history in programs, exhibits, and media. He also works to engage the statewide community in programs that help spread out the OHS mission of collecting, preserving, and sharing the history and the culture of Oklahoma and its people. He grew up in Colorado, speaking of Colorado, and he initially wanted to be a high school history teacher and a basketball coach, which you guys can’t see him because you are all in radio land out there. But, Dr. Pearce is a tall gentleman, and I’m 6’2”, and I have to look up to him. After graduating from Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado, he decided to try out graduate school in Oklahoma. He got his master’s degree and PhD from the University of Oklahoma. He went on to teach history classes at OU from 2014 to 2016, and then again in 2018. He became a full-time public historian in 2018 after being hired at Preservation and Design Studio, an architecture firm in Oklahoma City that specialized in rehabilitating historic properties, and he joined the Oklahoma Historical Society in 2021 as the National Register of Historic Places coordinator for the Oklahoma State Historic Preservation Office. And, in addition to everything, part of his duties here involved The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture and also our historical marker program. And so, Dr. Matthew Pearce, thank you for being with us today, and welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Mattew Pearce: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Blackburn: And what I might add on that introduction is that he’s carrying on a legacy that goes back to Joseph Thoburn. Although Joseph was a journalist, he was a first state archaeologist, wrote the first state history book, set a tone of academic excellence that was recognized around the country. Then Muriel Wright would follow and be one of his co-authors on many books, and Muriel would be a staunch ally of academia and bringing in research into The Chronicles. And Joseph, or Thomas Foreman would have been in that line of succession in terms of historians, and then all the way through Kenny Franks. And I was here for many years as historian, Dr. Dianna Everett, who really thinks a lot of Matthew, and I might give her a shout out. She’s a tough sell. But if you can, if you can prove yourself to Dianna, she’s good. And she’s the godmother of the encyclopedia. Basically we got the grant. I just said Dianna had to do it, and she did, and did it in a fabulous way. But there’s a strong tradition of historians here that really lead the state in collecting, preserving, and sharing. And it’s good to have Matthew taking up that and carrying on.
Thompson: Well, I have to say, I feel a little outnumbered because it’s two PhDs to zero in here, and I feel just a little bit intimidated by all of you, but I’m so glad to bring you into the podcast for the first time, Matt, and we’ve got a great topic to talk about today. You’ve been doing such a good job in your first few months in this role. Of course, you’ve been with the OHS. What’s been your favorite part of being in this new role as state historian so far?
Pearce: I think my favorite part has been the chance to work with all the various divisions within the agency and kind of branch out a bit. From the State Historic Preservation Office, you’re solely focused on historic preservation and solely the built environment, you know, building, structures, and what have you. And in this new position, there have been parts of my, I like to think that there’s been parts of my brain that have been unlocked again because I’m able to think more about the types of projects that I want to do, whether it’s with museums, whether it’s with a particular site, or maybe an article or encyclopedia entry that I’ve had on the back burner for a while that I’m able to get back into, or, you know, bring some, you know, help revitalize the Historical Marker Program and things like that. So I get to be a full-fledged historian in such a large agency that covers the state is really exciting.
Thompson: Well, I’m bringing you in for this first, the topic we’re going to cover today is the birth of the State Park system in Oklahoma, and I couldn’t think of a better person to talk about this because especially with your role as the National Register of Historic Places coordinator, you have seen a lot of CCC architecture over your time, and I thought we could just kick off our our conversation today. We’re all people who love the outdoors. And, Bob, are there some favorite state parks that you’ve experienced in places you like to go during your time, your free time?
Blackburn: Obviously, you know, and excluding the Wichita Wildlife Refuge, that’s where I got married. I’ve hiked every valley, every peak in that entire park, starting when my wife and I were dating in the 1970s. So that’s a special place. But, if you say state parks, I think it would have to be Boiling Springs State Park because it’s close to Woodward. My wife and her family are from Woodward. We spent a lot of time out there over the years while we were dating and married, raising our son and now grandsons, and it’s an unusual geological formation. Those sand dunes with the artesian wells coming up in the middle, in this very dry country with sagebrush. And it’s got a nice little golf course, if no one has played golf out there. It is a challenge. The locals don’t even look for a ball if it’s out of the fairway. They just walk on and drop, because you can’t find it, and you don’t want to mess with the rattlesnakes. But it’s a beautiful place, and it’s so unusual, and there are CCC structures there. There was a CCC camp there at one time, and we’ve been in some of the cabins that were built by the CCs and it’s just, it’s so unusual, and it’s really an oasis on the Great Plains. I think that is one reason I like it so much.
Thompson: I have to say, the first time I went to Boiling Springs State Park, I thought it was false advertising, because you’re driving out to that park, and you think there is no way that there— because you’ve seen the pictures of the park, and it’s green and it’s lush, and you’re driving out into western Oklahoma, and you think there is no way this park is out here because, you know, it’s flat. And, you know, depending on the time of year, it can be brown out there, and then all of a sudden, it’s like you say, you hit that state park, and it’s green, and there’s a few rolling hills, and it’s beautiful, and it’s because of those springs that are there. And you’re like, “where in the world did this come from?”
Blackburn: And for our viewers, if someone were to go visit, if they haven’t been there, they’ve got to see it, if they really feel like they’re Oklahomans. But if they’re there, go out to the experiment station. The United States Forest Service started an experiment station on the other side of town. But it’s worth seeing because they planted an arboretum there in the early 20th century, trying to find out what would grow in this alien country, where generally it was eastern red cedars and grass, cottonwoods along the streams. But they were experimenting— what can we grow? No one knew what will grow, and so the experiment station still has much of the arboretum left. If you want to see 90-foot-tall Ponderosa pines in Oklahoma, it’s at that experiment station. Unusual geology out there, but I would encourage people to go out and explore a little bit.
Thompson: Matt, do you have a favorite state park to visit?
Pearce: So I would say probably similar to Boiling Springs, I’m always partial to Roman Nose State Park.
Thompson: Yeah.
Pearce: I think for similar reasons. In some ways, the fact that you kind of, you descend into that canyon, and in part, also because it’s accessible, like all the state parks were supposed to be. I live in northwest Oklahoma City, so Roman Nose is an easy hour-ish drive away. So it’s a great way to get out for the day, go hike up Inspiration Point and take that loop, and have the same thing with the CCC-built structures. Go have a picnic in one of the CCC-built pavilions and and just get away for the day and do that. Not CCC-related, but on the far, you know, western tip of the Panhandle, Black Mesa State Park. I have a good story from when some friends and I were in graduate school, we went out there to go hike Black Mesa and go hike the highest point in Oklahoma. And this was during spring break, and the weather in the Panhandle can be anywhere from 70s and 80s to a Plains blizzard, and we experienced all that in one day! It was gorgeous for the day we hiked up to the height of the mesa. It was perfect weather, no wind, perfect blue skies. And then, you know, as we fell asleep that night, all of a sudden the Plains blizzard came through. And I’m in graduate school, and I have just a very cheap sleeping bag, and I was about as cold as I’ve ever been. So, you know, it’s a long drive out there, but Black Mesa is well worth the trip.
Thompson: Well, I have to say, one of the things that I love to do is to go camping with my family. And we’ve made a point over the last several years, I try to go camping once in the spring and once in the fall, and I try to do a new state park every time. So at this point, and I’ve got in my house, I’ve got my state park map, where you can check them off, and I’ve done 18 of the 38 parks, and so I’m whittling in on those last few. But there’s a couple of them I like, and they have vastly different geography and terrain. I love Robbers Cave. It’s one of my favorites because I love all those beautiful trees, and I love the boulders that you can climb over out there. And that little lake that’s right there by the campgrounds is just beautiful and picturesque, and it’s a fun place to swim. And it’s just a beautiful setting for a state park. Of course, then the stories that go along with it, you know, you kind of get lost in the romanticism of it. And then my other one that I really like that maybe is a little bit surprising, but I love Great Plains State Park, and it’s out there in that country that you were just describing. It’s west of the Wichita Wildlife Refuge, about maybe 30 minutes, but it’s got all of that topography, and it’s got Tom Steed Lake there too. And I had a great campsite right by the lake, and I brought my kayak, and so I would go out at sunrise and kayak on the lake, and I got some phenomenal photos. Plus the wildflowers were all out. We camped in maybe April or May, but that one is a great park. So if you want all of the topography that you get out of the Wichita Wildlife Refuge, and then of course, adding a lake on top of it, go check out that one. It’s a good one for sure.
Blackburn: Trait, if I might cheat here and add one more.
Thompson: We’ll allow it, Bob.
Blackburn: Okay. And because architecturally, it’s an interesting building, but Tucker Tower at Murray State Park. And it has a fairly new, I say new, it is five, six years old now, but a new interpretive center where you really get a sense of the history of the area as well as the geology, geography, topography, you understand. A fun little story, we’re going to be talking about CCs today, and my wife and I were coming back from Dallas one time, and it rained us out at the Dallas Arboretum. So we said, we’ll stop in and see the new interpretive center in Tucker Tower. I wanted to climb it again. So we go in and it said video starting in four minutes or something on the CCs. I thought, well, I like the CCs. I want to sit down and watch it. So I sit there and wait until it comes on, and it’s me doing an interview with parks about the CCs. (laughter) So I’m sitting there watching myself telling me about the CCs. (laughter)
I’ll never forget that moment. But it’s a great visit, and the architecture of the center and the hiking trails, it’s a nice place to go.
Thompson: I guess the only question I have is, did you learn anything from yourself?
Blackburn: Well, I had a rebuttal. I was talking back to myself.
Thompson: Did you want to do over? Like, I could do that better again now. Well, this is a great place to start, and, you know, getting into the creation of our state park system, we became a state in 1907. It wasn’t until 1935, with the birth of the State Park Commission that we really started doing this. So we were a state almost 30 years before... now we had parks, in different parts of the state, but the creation of an actual state park system. And so, Bob, I thought it’d be great if you could start off and just give us a little bit of that context of what’s going on in the ’30s that makes Oklahoma want to jump on this train and start our own state park system.
Blackburn: Yeah. Well, as I’ve said before on many podcasts, politically we are conservative populist. We don’t like government, typically, we don’t like centralized government. So many park efforts up to the 1930s were done by cities and towns. But in a lot of small towns, you just walk two blocks, and you’re in the country. So the need for nature, the need to get outside, enjoy the sunshine and the beautiful landscape is so accessible. A lot of people in rural Oklahoma didn’t think about parks. Well, in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, of course, you have the park system. In Oklahoma City, the park system starts in 1905. And part of the progressive movement, the Cities Beautiful Movement, got to plant trees. We have to put aside nature. We have to have let people have access to the beauty of being outdoors. A healthy community, all of those things. Same in Tulsa. But largely our governors did not support the park system up to that point. The legislature would not have wanted to put just in a few parks because they were worried about what can I take home to my constituents and get reelected in two or four years? And so that kind of centralized investment was not part.
And the tax base was so pathetic at the time. The only tax we had other than the gasoline tax, by 1930, was property taxes. That funded state and county government and a lot of city government, no sales tax at the time until later in the ’30s. So a low-tax base, that conservative populism, and then you get to Alfalfa Bill Murray when much of the country is thinking, well, let’s take advantage of some of these new programs that the federal government is offering to invest in and embrace. The National Park Service had been around since 1916, I think it was. And so the federal government was into parks, and the feds were saying, we want to help states with their parks. But Alfalfa Bill Murray, the ultimate conservative populist, said, no, we don’t want federal money, and he was such a cantankerous old fart, (laughter) that the federal government wouldn’t work with him.
Thompson: Well, it didn’t help that he hated FDR with every breath of his being.
Blackburn: He did, and so the federal officials would not trust him. He would not do what they wanted in terms of, you always have red tape with federal relief funds. That’s just part of the deal. Yeah, we want it, we’ll do it your way. Murray, he was against that. But what is happening, people are unemployed. There is a real, a spiritual problem, and not just in terms of faith, but in the spirit of community that we’re failing, our free enterprise system is failing us. A third of Oklahomans are unemployed or underemployed. The agricultural sector is dying on the vine, and people are leaving. Grapes of Wrath is that classic story that Steinbeck captured the drama of that. And so you have this topsy-turvy feeling about your own culture, like, are we on the right track? Are we really going to be better tomorrow than we are today? And losing hope. And what happens is that Roosevelt brings that hope back almost immediately. You see, we’re going to close the banks. We’re going to reform the financial system, and you get a series of reforms, despite a very conservative Supreme Court at the time. But things are changing at the national level. In Oklahoma, we’re still losing that, that state spirit that we need to grow. And then along comes another governor, E. W. Marland, Ernest W. Marland, from Pennsylvania, brought that mid-Atlantic cultural philosophy. He was not a conservative populist. He would have been more of a conservative, cut from the same cloth as a Theodore Roosevelt. That would have been his mindset. He comes West. He wants the best of everything. So his mansion is the most incredible house in Oklahoma, there in Ponca City. He brings in a Japanese gardener and sends him around the world bringing back plants. Let’s make this a more beautiful world. That’s him, and then he starts Conoco Oil. Marland Oil that becomes Conoco, but he has this new attitude and is elected governor on a platform that was very simple. Bring the New Deal to Oklahoma.
Alfalfa Bill had kept it out, probably half or more of Oklahomans would have agreed with him that we don’t want that federal money. But here’s Marland leading the way, and he’s fighting the conservative nature of Oklahoma government that centered on county commissioners at the time. Let’s bring more authority to legislature, to the governor’s office, do more statewide projects. This new attitude. And here comes the New Deal when he takes office in 1935, just at the time that CCs are created, other programs would come along, the Works Progress Administration, the PWA-Public Works Administration, and WPA.
Pearce: The Works Progress Administration.
Blackburn: Works Progress Administration. Thank you.
Pearce: Alphabet soup.
Blackburn: Alphabet soup, that starting with the CCs, and the reason he really embraced the CCs so quickly is that the military ran it with the efficiency that only the military could bring to the bureaucracy. Government is really small at the time, but they know how to train. Local county officials would say, yes, these people are on the relief rolls. They need public assistance, and the army putting that system together could mobilize quickly. Even George Marshall, who would later become a hero of World War II, started leading a CC campaign in, I think it was Illinois or some state in the Great Lakes area. And so because of that efficiency and then the willingness of the state to work with them and Marland saying, yeah, let’s do it. And then working with communities to say, where can we establish parks with this new partnership? Local, state, federal—and it works!
Thompson: Matt, let’s get into the history of the CCC, and so that we don’t drown our listeners in alphabet soup, CCC means the Civilian Conservation Corps. So can you get into why it was created? And I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what Bob kind of touched on as well is this idea that we’re getting separated from our roots a little bit. This rural/urban thing was happening, and we felt that nature was out of balance, and the CCC was this attempt to kind of bring nature back into balance and also bringing in some of those ideals that they felt like we had forgotten. They felt like we had disassociated ourselves from our pioneering past and from our rugged past, and this was an attempt to bring it back. I’d love for you to get into some of this history of how this CCC gets started and what it does.
Pearce: Yeah. So the CCC is part of the famous 100 days legislation that FDR enacted shortly after coming into office to try to stop, or try to at least put a Band-Aid on, the worst effects of the Great Depression. Because when he takes office, the nation has plummeted to to its absolute worst in terms of the economic depression. And so it’s created through the Emergency Conservation Work Act. And the key phrase there is emergency. It was a sense that this was an emergency. We need to get people back to work, and also we have significant projects that are out in the public lands and in the states that need to get done, and we have unemployed men that can get to do that type of work.
So the criteria was pretty simple. A young man had to be unemployed. They had to be single, ages, I think, 18 to 25 years of age, in order to be eligible to work for the CCC. They had to go through, Bob mentioned the role that the US military played in this whole process, an enrollee would have to go through the military, you know, get physical testing, mental testing. They have to be proven to be fit to get into the program, and then they’d get assigned to a CCC camp, and typically they would get paid $30 a month, $25 of that had to go back to their families. And so, again, this goal of getting, you know, getting people back to work, getting them money, and also getting that money back into the hands of families and so that they could support themselves. You know, the typical CCC enrollee would have been, you know, around, would have been in their early 20s, all likelihood would not have had anything more than an eighth-grade education. They go to a CCC camp. They’re promised three meals a day, which would have been more than they would have likely had elsewhere.
Thompson: Yeah.
Pearce: So like that on its own is, you know, the chance to, to work hard, learn a trade, you know, have three square meals a day, get a chance to get an education. And, you know, all those things would certainly be enticing to a lot of folks who were out of work at the time. And then you also have this, with the onset of the Great Depression, there is this concern about that the nation had kind of fallen out of balance, that there’s this, you know, out of balance between the industrial part of the country and the agricultural sector. And especially within Oklahoma, we have, you know, overproduction of of wheat and other crops. We have the onset of the Dust Bowl, and we have these types of disasters that are happening in the state. And you have planners, and the New Deal planners that see the CCC and these other programs as a way to get, you know, get the nation back into balance and try to do that, and also try to address these environmental issues. And, and also, those types of things to get people back to work. And the other thing that’s a big kicker here is the growing interest in outdoor recreation. And so, you know, we have E. W. Marland get elected on his promise to get the New Deal in Oklahoma. You also have a number of federal agencies, some of whom are also themselves the product of New Deal programs that see this influx of labor coming in to say, hey, yes, we can actually use this labor to get some much needed projects done. In terms of the National Park Service, the Park Service itself had been created in 1916, and there were some national parks that had been established by that point. But the Park Service goes on to start to create this, you know, what we think of today as the National Park System connected by roads. And then within those parks, you have trails, scenic highways and campsites, and all of which that people can access through the automobile, which explodes in popularity after World War I. And so you have a growing number of Americans that are going to the outdoors, and they’re going to the outdoors, not necessarily for subsistence. They’re not going just to hunt and fish. They’re going out there to enjoy it and to camp either for the day or for the weekend, and to go out and enjoy nature in a more leisurely way than, you know, the typical rugged pioneer sense.
Thompson: And in the 1920s, because of industrialization and the conveniences that are starting to come into the home, we finally start to have leisure time.
Pearce: Yeah.
Thompson: And I think that’s an important thing to note is so much of our lives as Americans, up to and through World War I, is really about work. And if you’re not working at a job somewhere, you have to come home and work, and you have to get your food, and all of those other kinds of things. But after World War I, you finally have the ability. There are machines now that can do that. You start to see the first washing machines. You start to see the first iteration of a vacuum cleaner, and all of these things that make life so much easier. And so now what are you going to do with your free time? Well, let’s go back outside.
Pearce: And especially, you mentioned the the increase in, you know, these time-saving devices that make our lives easier. It’s a chance to go back into nature and to, you know, reconnect with nature and to kind of get away from modern society, just for a little bit even. That’s where you have, you know, a growing interest in national parks. You know, at this time too, the national forests are becoming too, and they’re embracing recreation more than they had in the past. And then, of course, you’re seeing the interest in state parks as well.
Blackburn: And really Trait, Oklahoma finally joins the mainstream. Oklahoma typically is a little bit behind times.
Thompson: Sometimes we’re a little late to the party.
Blackburn: We’re so conservative. We don’t like change. I’ve had people tell me that in our museum business. Dr. Blackburn, I don’t like change. Okay. But, you have really, to me, the two godfathers of this whole movement, of getting back to nature, would be the philosophical leader, John Muir, who really helped save Yosemite. Without John Muir, that’s probably a dam and a flood and a big lake. But John Muir was a poet who captured people’s imagination and he was in the minority. But he then had, the other half of that was Theodore Roosevelt, who really believed in conservation, who believed in setting aside these beautiful parks. And he did some of the early work there, really set the stage for what would come to conclusion during the Wilson administration, but Roosevelt got it started. So he was the force, you know, the rigorous life, the strenuous life. Get out there and exercise. That’s the way to health and happiness. And then you have a John Muir saying, we need to conserve these beautiful places where we can gather together outdoors. And you put the poet and the politician together, and good things were happening, and Oklahoma finally joins the band.
Pearce: Well, and then we often forget Franklin Roosevelt. He got his start in New York politics in the Forestry Commission and considered himself a forester in some ways similar to his cousin. And so, you know, he had his background. In addition, here we have, you mentioned John Muir by this time, we also I mean, Aldo Leopold is coming into his own working with the Forest Service in developing his, what would come to be known as the land ethic. In terms of outdoor recreation, you see the rise in, we might talk about this a little bit later with the types of architecture that you encounter in the parks, but landscape architecture becomes a profession during the interwar period between World War I and World War II. And you have agencies like the Forest Service and the Park Service hire these individuals because one of the things that happened is, okay, we have John Muir and others, you know, preserve and save places like Yosemite, but then people start coming in to see it. And how do you plan, and how do you mitigate the effects of those people, and how can you design landscapes in a way that you can preserve those scenic landscapes and while also, you know, dictating where people can and can’t go? And that’s one thing that the CCC plays a huge role in, in terms of designing these landscapes.
Thompson: And going back to Franklin Roosevelt. He felt like that this return to nature would inspire Americans and the pioneer spirit that stressed the qualities of individualism, hard work, and moral character. And so he felt like that this is not only going to be economic development, but this is going to bring Americans out of this Depression-era malaise, if you will, that we’re going to reconnect with our roots as being who we are as Americans. And I just want to point out, you know, so that we can get this mentioned. But the Civilian Conservation Corps was created in 1933. It lasted until 1942. And of course, for obvious reasons, by 1942, our attention was turned to the war, and really the economic reason for the CCC kind of went away as we ramp up for war production in the early 1940s. Over three million men participated in the program nationwide during the time that it was administered. And we typically see the CCC as being, because the place where we see it most is in our parks, but it was everything from reforestation, they did flood prevention work, road construction work, they did other public improvements on public lands. Those dams that were built in the Wichita Wildlife Refuge are all CCC projects out there, and so it’s a lot more than just our state parks. They were doing projects all over the country.
Blackburn: Well once the CCs really were available, and Oklahoma City stepped up as a partner, and the CCs established camps both at Northeast Park, which would be renamed Lincoln Park, and one at Will Rogers Park that was originally Northwest Park on the Grand Boulevard concept. You know, both places, you see the hands of the CCC. The Zoo Amphitheatre that so many young people go to now, how did this come about? It was CCs. And at Will Rogers, we probably have more CC remnants there than any park in Oklahoma City, but they made sure that the early zoo that was being redeveloped had the grottos. Me as a kid, when the zoo was free until 1976, I believe. So as a kid, we would go out there and we would hang on to the grottos and look at the bears and the lions and the other animals. Those are all CC-constructed, and it made a real impact on the parks in Oklahoma City as it did around the state.
Pearce: And you could almost do a whole other so episode in and of itself on the work that the CCC did in terms of soil conservation in the state, because so much of, you know, of course, the state, the western parts of the state are afflicted by drought and dust. And so, you know, the CCC is part of that, you know, initiative to plant trees across parts of the, you know, parts of the Great Plains to create this shelterbelt program. The first shelterbelt, in the, as part of that program was established near Mangum. And so, you know, so they were involved with planting thousands of trees, you know, to try to provide shelter from dust and to try to stabilize crops, working with farmers to introduce new methods, such as contour plowing and things of that nature. And so, I mean, that’s another huge, huge part of their impact in terms of the state.
Thompson: Well, and so when we talk about the CCC in Oklahoma, by 1934, over 5,000 men were enrolled in CCC camps across the state. By the end of the program in 1942, over 107,000 Oklahomans would have cycled their way through and worked in the CCC camps. And, at one point, there were 60 CCC camps in the state. And so that is a lot of work happening in a state where, let’s be honest, the state government had not put a lot of investment into state infrastructure. This was probably a gigantic leap forward, Bob, in terms of developing the infrastructure for this state.
Blackburn: That’s right. And rebuilding these lives. One advantage of being old as I am is that when I started my career, there were a lot of CC guys still alive, and CC reunions were an annual event, and I spoke at many of those CC gatherings, and you could just tell that they thought that was a life-defining moment for them. A lot of them came from rural areas. Very little hope. They might join the navy. There were no jobs. If they moved to the cities, there were no jobs there either. So where do you turn? CCs gave them that hope, that oh, I’ve been trained. I’ve got some education. They got to participate in team sports, something they may not have the ability to do in their little towns. And so these young men, you know, were given that hope, and then they start investing, as you say, in that infrastructure. We did not have a parks department before 1935. We did not have anybody other than county commissioners, and largely they were obsessed with roads and county superintendents with schools. So county government was just taking care of the basics. They might have a poor farm but then hand out commodities at the time before the Welfare Department was created in the later ’30s. But there was really nobody else out there doing that, and people could see the results. And it’s one thing as a governmental leader, as you know, as the head of the Historical Society, you can tell people this is what we’re going to do. Well, until you do it, they’re thinking, yeah, sure you are. That’s the attitude of most Oklahomans and Americans, in many ways. But then they could see the results of the CCs almost immediately.
So here they are in downtown Oklahoma City in the two parks. You’re seeing those kids out there, they got the shovels and the picks. They’re building. They’re using native materials. They’re putting together things that resonate with memory. People recognize real quickly that this was a program that would have a substantial impact on our community. And it really, it jump-started the whole process that, yes, government can do some good things and give them the authority, the funding, and give them a mission to accomplish, and it can be done.
Thompson: So, Matt, we have Governor Marland, and he wants to get the state park system started in Oklahoma. And basically, we have to take advantage of all this federal money that’s available to do this. And so he connects with a man at the National Park Service named Herbert Meyer. And Herbert Meyer says, yes, there’s federal money available. We can use those ECW, Emergency Conservation Work funds. We can bring in the CCC camps into the state, but what you have to do is you have to create an agency by which the money can flow through, and we have to create a government structure for the money. And so Marland basically carves a new State Park Commission, created March 1, 1935, out of the Fish and Game Commission and works with the legislature to do that, the 15th legislature, and so we get a brand new State Park Commission. And the man who’s heading that, his name is A. R. Reeves, and I did a little bit of research on him. I couldn’t find a lot, but he had been, I think he was the state game warden, and he was moved over to be the head of the State Park Commission. By the way, I don’t think he got paid very much. And the three commissioners that were on the State Park Commission got paid nothing. And, this is how we start the mechanism for being able to accept those federal funds.
Pearce: It brings the state into that federal nexus, particularly with Herbert Meyer, and getting that contact with the National Park Service, and that’s the key. That’s the key thing, because that’s where, you know, that’s where a lot of those federal funds and where those CCC camps flow through, and it’s up to the Park Service to figure out, okay, where are we going to prioritize, you know, where we’re going to place those camps. And so it’s again, goes back to what I was talking about earlier, about the importance of planning and why the federal government was insistent upon the state creating some sort of mechanism that you could have a governing structure, you know, to administer these parks once the program ended. And so what that opens up, is it provides access to the federal funding and also the expertise. And so it gets, you know, it gets Oklahoma in contact with those parks, service architects, landscape architects, engineers who can come in and train CCC enrollees into how to be stonemasons, electricians, and so forth, and to put these parks together.
Thompson: Now, one thing that happened is they were given an appropriation of $25,000, which is, I guess, great. I haven’t done a time value of money to see how much that is, but I don’t think it’s a lot of money, even in 1935. It’s certainly not enough money to buy all the thousands of acres of land that you were going to need to start up a state park system. And the federal government said, we’re going to bring the money down to develop the parks, and we’re going to give you all the labor to do all the work, but you’ve got to procure the land, and so one of Mr. Reeves’s main jobs was to start working in these different sectors of the state to procure the land. And I found this great article in the, I believe it was the Oklahoma City Times. The title of the article was “Talkative Man Talks Towns and Citizens into Giving States 17,000 Acres of Land to be Converted into Beautiful Parks.” And that’s essentially what he did. He had to go get, either through private donations out of people’s personal land holdings, or cities and counties had to buy this land with funds that they had available, and then come in to buy the land. One of the lines in the article is “some people are paid to sell things, but A. R. Reeves is not one of these. Mr. Reeves talks people into giving the state of Oklahoma real estate,” and that’s what he did. It said “he has talked various municipalities and citizens into giving the state some 17,000 acres of land in less than two years.”
And so I just want to say out there, if anybody’s listening to this podcast and maybe A. R. Reeves was your relative or you know more about him, I would love to know more about this gentleman because I did a little bit of research and didn’t find much. So, shoot me an email or give me a call and tell me about him if you know about him, because that’s quite a feat, 17,000 acres of land in two years.
Pearce: Oh and it speaks to one of the different challenges that Oklahoma faced compared to maybe another Western state when it came to creating state parks. Whereas other Western states still had significant portions that might have still been considered public domain, where the state could have formally purchased that land or could have acquired the land through some other means. In Oklahoma, you know, a gentleman like Reeves, has to go out and get what was essentially private land and have them give it back to the state. And so that’s a really interesting, you know, dynamic that’s going on in Oklahoma compared to other Western states.
Thompson: Well they didn’t use eminent domain. This was all donated land. So we’re talking about the original seven state parks. And so, I think that probably, you know, we should go ahead and mention what those parks were, but Lake Murray was actually purchased, the area around Lake Murray State Park, but we had Quartz Mountain, near Lugert, 3,300 acres. Boiling Springs near Woodward; that was 900 acres. Roman Nose near Watonga, 720 acres. Osage Hills, near Pawhuska, 720 acres. Robbers Cave, near Wilburton, 8,340 acres. Beavers Bend near Broken Bow, 1,250 acres. Spavinaw Hills, which is no longer a state park, and we could talk about that here in a minute, which was in Mayes and Delaware Counties was 1,570 acres. And then, of course, the eighth park that came along a little bit later, which was a whole different situation because, at Lake Murray, they really kind of condemned the land as being not usable, as not good for any productive purpose, and that’s where they brought in the lake and everything, and that park opened in 1938. So those are our original seven state parks, all in different areas of the state. And part of the goal was to be able to have 60% of the population of the state of Oklahoma within a drive of 75 miles of a state park, and so, those seven were where we started.
Blackburn: You know, one thing that is common in those sites you just mentioned, Trait, is that these were lands that were not good for agriculture, or you would have had homesteaders on them, and there would have been, you know, a couple of generations by that time. They were probably not suitable for mining, drilling oil. You would not have had a lot of timber being harvested. So in terms of the natural resources that most Americans saw as something to exploit, that would drive the economy, adding value to something out there, is that these areas had low value in terms of free enterprise, but in terms of getting back into nature, enjoying a changing topography, and most park planners, and I’ve discovered this in Oklahoma City when they were looking for the “four quadrant parks,” they looked for lands that had changing elevations. They love buttes. They love valleys. They love these rock outcrops. Well, if you’re a farmer, you’re thinking, man, that’s wasted space. But to someone who loves the outdoors, that is something that has value. So you’re adding value to something within the American system, not to make money, but to improve quality of life. So you’re getting a return, not monetary, but in other ways. So it fits the American system very well, and many people appreciated it so quickly that it grew. And today, the National Park System, I think is one of the most revered of all federal agencies. The one year that Congress shut down federal government, the biggest reaction was I couldn’t get into the parks, and that just shows how important it is, and the same with state parks. There have been efforts to close state parks and transfer them back. There’s a man, you know, a few little instances, Red Rock Canyon being one, but a family there is taking care of that for us. My wife and I go there often, but people saw the value added when there was no way to add value to it financially, but there was in terms of beauty and nature and recreation and family. We have to remember, no air conditioning in Oklahoman homes until the 1950s.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: And so if you were a family and you want to go out for a 4th of July, you are not going to sit in a house and have a 4th of July gathering of family. You were going to go to a local park. Chickasha, my hometown, you’d go to the Shannon Springs Park, a natural park. It was in this valley. Gorgeous. The playground equipment, the trees to get under. That’s what people were looking for at the time. And so the fact that it did not contribute to the economy was, ironically, the best thing for the park system.
Thompson: Well, and one of, and the research that I was doing, and Matt, you can chime in here on this as well, is, you know, there was a lot of interest in these cities and counties purchasing some of this land, for example, Osage Hills, Boiling Springs, this was land, also Roman Nose, this was land that was purchased by those cities in those counties. And they recognized that the benefit, first of all, establishing a CCC camp there. Second of all, once the park was up and operating, they knew that people were going to be coming into those towns to get supplies and get their groceries and all those other things.
Pearce: Yeah, you start to see the rise of auto tourism and you see towns that are starting to recognize the benefits of that by going to these scenic areas or these areas that, yeah, they were seen worthless in terms of agriculture or timber or mineral resources, but they did provide those aesthetic values that again, by this time people were looking for.
Blackburn: When you mentioned Roman Nose, that reminded me, I wrote the history of Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores years ago. Tom and Judy Love’s first store was in Watonga because it was an intersection of two highways people were traveling. In the summertime, people were heading out to Roman Nose Park, and they were stopping and buying to six-pack of beer. 860 46:00,258 --> 00:46:04,802 I talked to one of the early managers who was there in the 1960s, and he said one time he ran out of Coors and he called the Coors truck out of Oklahoma City, to say, get me more beer. I can sell all the beer that I’ve got because it’s like 108 degrees on a day. But people were getting outside, and so entrepreneurs like Tom Love saw that connection that you just mentioned between economic opportunity and people wanting to get out into the beauty of nature.
Thompson: When you talk, I found this little blurb in some of the newspapers, by the way, folks, The Gateway to Oklahoma History is a great place to do your newspaper research, and you can see that at gateway.okhistory.org. A little plug there, Bob, for our great digital resources here at the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Blackburn: A little commercial spot there.
Thompson: Nobody gets paid for it. But I found this blurb about Quartz Mountain State Park, and it said “Hobart has never had a swimming pool, and residents of that area had to go to Medicine Park 60 miles away if they wanted a splash. The Quartz Mountain pool was will serve a radius of more than 20 miles.” So, for some of these people that were way out there and way far away from being able to have any kind of recreational activity, this, these state parks. I almost want to use this phrase, um, I’m going to use it anyway, “the democratization of fun.” You know, bringing, you don’t just have to live in a city anymore. You can live in some of these far out places, and now you can go, and you can have some of the same amenities that previously would have been just unthinkable.
Blackburn: You don’t have to be rich.
Pearce: And that goes back to the Park Service’s overall mission of “See America First.” And one reason why they jumped on board with state parks in a lot of ways was because they recognized that not everybody could afford to go to a state park. Not everyone can afford to go to Yosemite or Yellowstone or Grand Canyon or Acadia, but they can afford to go to a state park. And so, you know, their ability to be able to come in and help the states create state park system. It’s during the New Deal that you have 800 state parks across the country created. And so, yeah, it goes to this idea of, you know, democratizing the outdoors and getting people out to enjoy these spaces and to, you know, participate in outdoor recreation and to do so in a way that it’s just in their backyard, and it broadens the, you know, it broadens interest in conservation, in ecology, what we’d call environmentalism. You know, all of that comes from, you know, from state parks in some ways.
Thompson: Matt, I want to bring you in because this is going to be in your wheelhouse, given your previous work at the State Historic Preservation Office. But the CCC architecture, and it’s called National Park Service, NPS Rustic, is the style of architecture. And it was really designed as a way to complement the surroundings. Can you talk about that architecture, how the CCC employed it, what kind of materials they would use to be able to accomplish this?
Pearce: Yeah. So the Park Service had been perfecting what we call NPS Rustic for a couple of decades. You know, by the time the CCC comes around, you go to, you know, Glacier National Park, for instance, or some of the first lodges up there and other national parks. And the whole idea of it was just to have, because of course the parks recognize that we need to provide amenities for people. People want nice places to stay. They need, you know, a nice place to have a picnic and those types of things. But we want to create structures and buildings in a way that they don’t overwhelm the landscape. They’re in, they conform to the setting. And so that’s kind of the whole principle around NPS Rustic. And it also is building upon what we’ve been talking about earlier, about people’s expectations when they’re going back into nature. You know, it plays upon the the expectations of people kind of going back in time, so to speak, and to kind of get a sense of, what the park may have looked like originally or those types of things. So it’s playing upon, they’re not, these are not structures that are engaging in the latest, you know, architectural designs of the day. They are not embracing Art Deco, for instance, or anything like that. They are all about using local materials and kind of having a minimal impact on the environment. So, in terms of how this is applied in the Oklahoma State Parks, we see widespread use of local materials: wood, sandstone, limestone, and in the construction of all of their, you know, building structures and so forth, from cabins to pavilions to superintendents’ residences and so forth. There’s a big emphasis on horizontality, basically an emphasis on horizontal, not vertical. And so you don’t see multi-story buildings. You’re seeing, you know, one-story cabins and, you know, and so forth.
You also seeing some variation in terms of what materials are used in which park. So if you go to a park like Beavers Bend where you have widespread, you have more timber than you have access to stone. And so, you know, those are structures that are overwhelmingly timber. So it’s, you know, log siding, the wood shake shingle roofs and those types of things. If you go further west into some state parks, like Quartz Mountain, Boiling Springs, you see more stone being used because that’s kind of more playing upon that southwestern Pueblo type of architecture. And even I mean, if you go to the state parks, you can even just see this and just the types of details. Like again, I mentioned Beavers Bend earlier, the wood siding that’s used on those cabins, it’s a live edge, you know. So it has a more of a rough edge. It’s more rustic-looking. You go to like Lake Murray or to some of the other western parts, and it’s just, it’s a basic like sawmill edge, it’s a straight edge. It’s not, you know, it’s the exact opposite of that because they again, they’re trying to play upon those regional variances in terms of what people might expect a log cabin to look like, depending on whether they’re in Beavers Bend or in Boiling Springs, for instance. And so all this work is being carried out by CCC laborers, but it’s under the direction of NPS architects, National Park Service architects. And so if, you know, the State Historic Preservation Office, we had copies of pretty much all of those drawings of superintendents’ residences, the early lodges, or cabin plans, which usually played upon, you may have had like two or three different floor plans, but they were somewhat interchangeable, so forth. But, you know, all those documents are signed off by NPS engineers and so forth.
Blackburn: And I might add a little context here. Great description, Matthew, of the style. But really two things are happening in really reaching their golden age by the ’30s. One is the Arts and Crafts movement that comes out of England in the 1880s and ’90s. It becomes the thing in America, that was a minority, but you see it in Greene and Greene Mansion in Pasadena. You see it in Oak Park near Chicago, and then you get Frank Lloyd Wright’s influence on architecture in general. He’s, to me, the godfather of the of the organic American architecture. He says, we’re going to do the Prairie Style, that horizontal strength, the strong columns connecting the structure to the ground. This return to nature, you see that in a lot of their homes, and with the Arts and Crafts movement, let’s get back away from machine-processed uniformity to this natural look that’s done by hands. And that accomplishes two things for the CCs as well as would later for the WPA and the PWA, that you’re making more work. If you have these guys out there with chisels banging away at this natural stone, you’re employing them for extra days, which is accomplishing the mission of the program itself. So these big things, Arts and Crafts, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School, the National Park Service embracing that, the natural materials that make the work, it all comes together to create this legacy that we’re still enjoying today.
Pearce: And you see it in terms of the just the diversity in terms of the built environment at these state parks. It’s not just cabins, it’s bridges, culverts, latrines, water towers, pump houses. There’s, if you just look closely at some of these state parks, the diversity in what CCC workers were doing. And yes, some of those structures, you blink and you miss them, or you might not know that they’re there, because they are meant to blend in with the environment. And so it’s a really, you can easily tell why people are drawn to that type of style.
Thompson: So, Matt, you were doing a lot of work on this type of architecture in your previous job. What’s the state of the CCC architecture in our parks today? Can people still go to those parks and see the result of all of that hard work and labor?
Pearce: Yeah, they certainly can in terms of, you know, being the former National Register coordinator, Lake Murray State Park and Robbers Cave State Park are both listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Those are the two parks that are, they’re really, I would recommend if you’re wanting to go to a state park to see CCC-built, you know, buildings and structures, those would be the two parks that I would recommend that you that you would start at. And they still have a really good collection of cabins, bridges, and so forth. Lake Murray has some of them. They’re not necessarily accessible to the public, but Lake Murray had three group camps, in addition to the main individual cabin campground area that would be rented out to youth groups and so forth.
In some cases, those cabins have been well-maintained. They’re still in use. But there are other group campgrounds that are in pretty poor shape, where you’ve had some structures collapse and so forth due to budget cuts, lack of use, and that type of thing. And then you have, in other state parks, you know, Beavers Bend would be probably a good example of this, where you still have a really good core of CCC-built cabins and visitor centers or things like that. But of course, a lot of the state parks now have new lodges that are, that are much larger than what would have been there previously, or Beavers Bend in the ’70s they, you know, built a Forest Heritage Center that’s, you know, pretty much right next door to, you know, their corps of CCC-built cabins, or they’ve built river-view cabins, or in their case, you know, one of the trends that I’ve noticed in working with state parks is the trend is kind of more towards these so-called tiny cabins, and they’ve, in some cases, they’ve been doing that at the expense of the CCC-built group camps, because in some of these cases, you know, we’re talking about 1930s and this emphasis on, you know, on public recreation spaces and so forth. You know, a lot of cases now, a park like Beavers Bend could be an example of this, where state parks are facing competition from, you know, luxury cabin rentals.
Thompson: Yeah.
Pearce: And some of those types of things where, you know, it’s people are now, in some cases, they’re wanting to go out to nature, but they want all of the amenities.
Blackburn: They want wi-fi.
(laughing)
Pearce: Yeah, they want the wi-fi. They don’t want to stay, and also, you know, you mentioned, you know, you referenced my height earlier. I’m 6’7". Those CCC-built cabins are kind of small. And so you know, they want the vaulted ceilings and those types of things, and they want hot tubs and so forth. So it has, you know, and when I was able to go out and talk to state parks folks when we were doing architectural surveys, that was one of the things that that struck me was, A: the challenges that they’re facing in terms of, you know, the VRBO, Airbnb, luxury rental cabins. And then the other thing, and Bob, you mentioned this with, you know, the amount of labor it took to build these structures. You need to have skilled people, skilled craftsmen to maintain these structures. And that is something where state parks, you know, struggles in order to find people that can do that work, whether it’s maintaining wood-framed windows, repairing a stone chimney, making repairs to wood siding and that type of stuff. That takes a skilled craftsmen to do.
Blackburn: Now, I might add, even though it’s not a state park, I would recommend people go to the Chickasaw Recreation Area, old Platt National Park, CCs were there, and the feds, of course, have much deeper pockets than we have here in the state of Oklahoma. And so they have done a great job of preserving the CC structures and the low water bridges and the viewing areas. You could get a real tour of the CCs. There’s a booklet on the CCs there. It was written by a professor at East Central years ago, wish I can think of his name now, but he talks about the CC camps there, so you can read about it, you can see it. So, I kind of treat it like a state park, you know, in our federal system, now tribal managed. And so, and the Chickasaws are doing a great job with that. But I highly recommend that if someone is searching for some CC structures.
Thompson: Yeah, you might want to, as of the time we’re recording this, that park was hit by a tornado just a few weeks ago, and there’s a lot of damage there, so you might want to give them a little time to recover. But you’re right. It is a beautiful park. And I love particularly all those old rock bridges that are located in that park. And one thing I want to touch on before we we close up, because this is an important part. We’re talking about the 1930s in Oklahoma. We’re talking about the 1930s in the South, and racial segregation was a big part of this. And, Matt, in some of your research, you uncovered that there were CCC camps just for, Black people and for Indians, and I’d love for you to touch on that a little bit as well.
Pearce: Okay. So we know there were at least five All-Black CCC camps in Oklahoma. There were reports of one mixed-race camp in Tulsa. But even in that case, you know, it was a segregated camp where whites and Blacks lived and slept in separate quarters. And then I do think one overlooked aspect of the CCC is what was called the CCC Indian Division or the CCC-ID, and that was where, it was the aspect of the CCC that was overseen by the Office of Indian Affairs. And it involved separate camps on reservation, on reservation lands for American Indians. And in terms of Oklahoma, the majority of the CCC-ID camps and funds were allocated toward the Five Tribes. There are also camps associated with the Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. And at one point, there were as many as 500 men enrolled in the CCC-ID, and what made them different from the CCC camps that worked on state parks, because those were public lands, the CCC-ID worked mainly on tribal lands. And so, they would be restricted. Their work was often restricted to tribal lands or lands that were utilized by the Office of Indian Affairs. So it would be, work on school buildings or soil erosion work at boarding schools, such as Chilocco and that type of thing. So it does reflect the segregation of the day. And then, you know, similarly, we had state parks. Lake Murray comes to mind where you had the parks themselves were racially segregated, and you had separate places for whites and Blacks to go.
Thompson: Yeah, it was interesting that there were only two parks out of the original seven or eight where Black people were allowed to go. One was Lake Murray, and one was Roman Nose. And unfortunately, those were both in counties where there was very little of the Black population. So when we talk about this idea of the “democratization of fun,” in the 1930s in Oklahoma, it was for a selected group of people, and not for people, unfortunately, who had dark skin.
Pearce: And I will say too, and Lake Murray’s example of this, where I had the chance to, a couple of years ago to survey their, their CCC-built cabins, and the segregated camp that was relegated for use by African Americans is on the east side of the lake. It’s not accessible to the public. I had to, you know, ask the park superintendent to get a key to to access it. And it’s off, a bit off the beaten path, so to speak. And then in terms of, you know, you can tell, you know, you could certainly see how “separate but equal” was a fiction, just in terms of how the cabins were designed. When you go to the other group camps or you went to where the lodge was, that’s where you see the best examples of NPS Rustic architecture. The segregated camp was very much, it was very plain, very poor craftsmanship, very poor materials that were used. And as a result, like that’s one of the group camps that’s in the worst condition right now, because those cabins were not very well built. They didn’t use the best materials to do it. And, you know, it relays the the fact that separate but equal was very much a fiction when it came to, you know, outdoor recreation and the role that segregation played. And there’s been a really good increase in the literature over the past few years in terms of segregation in national parks, state parks, even just outdoor parks in general.
Blackburn: And too, the US Army was segregated into the 1940s. And Harry Truman signed the executive order for desegregated armed services. My dad served in World War II with only-white units, and so that reflected in America. at the time.
Thompson: Well, this is where we’ve got to end our story on the birth of the State Park System. We do know that by 1942, when the CCC camps were decommissioned, not all of the work in the state parks were finished. We know there were several state parks like Osage Hills State Parks in Osage County where they were really scrambling to try to figure out what to do because there were unfinished roads, unfinished bridges, and things like that. And so they were really trying to, you know, kind of left us in a lurch. But of course, that manpower was needed in other places now. We had a war to fight. And we won’t get too far into that conversation today. We’ll have to leave that for another episode or for your own personal research out there.
But suffice it to say, the state of Oklahoma, decided to, in 1935, to start something that we’re still enjoying today. And now we have, at my count, 38 state parks. My friend, Shelley Zumwalt, who’s the director of tourism and recreation, she may correct me on that. And she’s also been talking about how they have over 300 million dollars in deferred maintenance across the State Park System. And so I would just encourage everyone, these parks are here for you to enjoy them across the state of Oklahoma, to get out there, and to support those parks, because this is a lasting legacy that was created in the ’30s for a place where we could all come out and enjoy nature. And, boy, I love nothing more than to go kayak on a nice lake in one of the state parks, or to go for a nice hike. Just so much, so many good recreational activities. And this is, we have a gem, you know, whatever kind of landscape you’re interested in in Oklahoma, all the way from the arid, arid, open spaces at Black Mesa, all the way down, all the way down to the south, to Raymond Gary State Park in the far southeastern corner of the state. You can find something that you like at any of our state parks. And so I would just encourage everyone to get out there and take advantage of that.
Pearce: If I could add a couple of closing, maybe closing statements. I think one is we will not have a state park system in Oklahoma without the New Deal and Park Service and the CCC.
Thompson: Right.
Pearce: And I think another thing is, we see this is a testament to the significance of the CCC, in that it routinely, I mean, I grew up in Colorado and used to work for the Forest Service. And routinely out here, folks talk about how, hey, we need another version of the CCC. We need to get people involved in the outdoors. And I think, another testament to the significance of the CCC is the fact that you still have it certainly not on the scale that the CCC was at, but the fact that you’ve had programs come about over time, whether it’s the Job Corps that was part of the Great Society programs, or you have, you know, when I worked for the Forest Service in Colorado, we had the Southwest Conservation Corps, which was a youth group that partnered with federal agencies to get people out in the outdoors to work, whether it was building a trail or improvement of campsites or those types of things. The fact that there are still these types of programs out there to get youth engaged and working in the outdoors, I think is a testament to the CCC’s significance.
Blackburn: And Trait, in my comments, if someone’s interested in researching their CC camps because they were over 60, I believe, in the state. If someone thinks they had one in their community, the federal documents are all preserved at the Department of Libraries. So it’s here in the Capitol Complex. I’ve used those records. You probably have too, Matthew, but they have those federal documents. And one good thing about the federal government, they have good archives. And they kept all the records of the architectural drawings are there. And then if you throw in what’s accessible through the newspapers and through The Gateway, we’re still digitizing, I think Chad told me going to be up near 24 million pages here soon in digitizing. So local people can go on The Gateway, check out their local newspapers as much as possible, put in the words Civilian Conservation Corps and there’ll be stories about those local kids because they were in town too, and it was good for those communities. So people can find out more about their own local history by using these sources.
Thompson: Well, Bob, this has been a fascinating topic, and, Matt, thank you so much for being a part of this and for adding to the conversation on the CCC and our state parks. And you’ve been a great guest, and I suspect we will be inviting you again soon.
Pearce: Looking forward to it. Thank you.
Blackburn: Thank you.
Thompson: Well, thanks everyone for joining us for this episode, and we’ll see you next time. (upbeat music plays) You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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