New Deal Accomplishment: 2.5 billion trees planted


Above: The description for this ca. 1938 photograph reads: "Planting crews in action near Dunlap [Texas] shown at work in the general type of country in which plantings of shelter belts of trees, against wind erosion, are being made by relief workers - many of them farmers employed on the U.S. Forest Service-WPA Prairie States Forestry Project. About 500 WPA workers were so employed in northwest Texas alone in 1938. Similar work is in progress in other prairie states of the region west of the Mississippi River." Photo from the National Archives.

Above: The description for this photo, also ca. 1938, reads: "Two-year-old shelterbelt near Memphis [Texas], planted by relief workers employed under the U.S. Forest Service-WPA Prairie States Forestry Project. Center rows of cottonwood flanked by Chinese elm, honey locust and Osage orange. The man shown in the picture is standing between the honey locust rows." Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A CCC camp and tree nursery near Parsons, West Virginia, ca. 1936. Photo from the Library of Congress.


Above: The description for this photograph reads: "These N.Y.A. youths at the Lassen Forestry Project in Susanville, Calif., are tying up young trees into protective wrapping for distribution to famous California forests." Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The CCC planted many trees at Green Ridge State Forest, Maryland. How many of them still stand today? And how many CCC trees continue to stand all across the country? And how many younger trees today were propagated by those New Deal trees? Photo by Brent McKee, 2011.


Above: FDR noted that "while only God can make a tree, we have to do a little bit to help ourselves" ("Remarks at Clarksburg, West Virginia, October 29, 1944," American Presidency Project, University of California Santa Barbara. WPA poster, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

2.5 Billion Trees Planted

Between 1933 and 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) planted over 2.3 billion trees; the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 5.7 million; the Works Progress Administration (WPA), 177 million; and the National Youth Administration (NYA), over 19 million trees (and shrubs) (statistics from the agencies' final reports). 

Other New Deal programs planted trees too--for example, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) planted thousands in Berkeley, California ("CWA To Plant More Trees," Oakland Tribune, February 21, 1934, p. 6)--but these nationwide totals can be harder to come by.

All in all though, we can safely say that the New Deal planted about 2.5 billion trees.

Comments

  1. SoonerApril 25, 2025 at 2:21 PM

    My wife grew up in Weatherford, Oklahoma and her backyard fronted on Hwy 66. That stretch of 66 had a shelterbelt of trees planted by the CCC and most are still there.

    ReplyDelete

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