New Deal Accomplishment: 80,000 miles and 2.1 million acres of wildfire fuel reduction

Above: Members of CCC Company 3859, stationed at Camp F-199 ("Camp Concow"), Butte County, California, ca. 1938. This company consisted of young men from Oklahoma who carried out a very large number of firefighting and fire pre-suppression work--e.g., truck trails and firebreak maintenance--in the Golden State. See bottom of blog post for photo credit.

Above: CCC Company 3859 at work on the Ponderosa Firebreak, at Concow, California, ca. 1938. See bottom of blog post for photo credit.

Above: Company 3859 burning brush in Butte County, California, ca. 1938. See bottom of blog post for photo credit.

Above: Triple Cs, in the Sacramento District, Ninth Corps Area, ca. 1938. See bottom of blog post for photo credit.

Above: Members of CCC Company 1216, Camp BR-36 ("Camp Lovelock"), Lovelock, Nevada,  "clearing roadside," ca. 1938. Before arriving in Nevada, this company engaged in "timber cleaning and building fire breaks throughout the Great Smoky Mountains." See bottom of blog post for photo and quote credit.

Above: Much fire hazard reduction work was carried out on Native lands by American Indians enrolled in the CCC ("IECW," or "Indian Emergency Conservation Work," was an early name for the CCC-Indian Division). Photos from: U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Indians at Work, December 15, 1933, p. 20.

Above: Other New Deal agencies, such as the WPA, also engaged in wildfire fuel reduction projects. This newspaper excerpt is from the Herald and News (Randolph, Vermont), May 4, 1939, p. 1. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Reducing Risk, Reducing Cost

Between 1933 and 1942, enrollees in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) carried out fire hazard reduction work (today, we call it "wildfire fuel reduction") on 2.1 million acres of land, and also along 80,000 miles of roadway (source).

This work included the removal of dead and fallen trees (the result of age, disease, or storms); the clearing of brush; and the removal of "slash," i.e., branches, limbs, and stumps "left behind by careless logging operators years ago" ("Battling Forest Fires Teaches CCC Importance of Its Conservation Work," The Minneapolis Tribune, March 5, 1935, p. 8).

Along roadsides specifically, the CCC might, for example, clear brush back 10 feet from the edges of the road and clear out dead materials within 100 feet ("Fine Job by CCC Boys at Camp Lonergan," The Day (New London, Connecticut), May 7, 1938, p. 18).

Other New Deal agencies carried out wildfire fuel reduction projects too, but the total volume is hard to know and, while significant, not as voluminous as the CCC's work.

We would be wise to replicate these New Deal efforts today, in order to reduce wildfire severity and curtail the trend towards unaffordable homeowners insurance.

"Researchers found overwhelming evidence that in seasonally dry mixed conifer forests in the western U.S., reducing surface and ladder fuels and tree density through thinning, coupled with prescribed burning or pile burning, could reduce future wildfire severity by more than 60% relative to untreated areas."

--"Comprehensive Science Review Shows Fuel Treatments Reduce Future Wildfire Severity," The Nature Conservancy, June 24, 2024.

(Unless otherwise noted, photos in this blog post come from: Civilian Conservation Corps, Official Annual, 1938, Sacramento District, Ninth Corps Area, Direct Advertising Co., Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1938, and are used here for educational and non-commercial purposes).