Company Bath House and Latrine

Company Bath House and Latrine. Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1475, Camp S-67, Tracy City. Keeping the CCC Boys clean... , Here, on the southern edge of Camp S-67, was the Bath House and Latrine. Most of their days consisted of doing hard, dirty, physical labor, so the nearly 200 young men of Company 1475 required plenty of room to shower, and enough sinks and toilets to efficiently handle large numbers at clean-up time., Water for the bath house came from Little Gizzard Creek, in the canyon below the camp. It was brought to this facility using an electric pump that was housed in a small building at Blue Hole, on the creek. As you walk the Grundy Day Loop trail, you'll pass the old concrete foundation of that pump house., While there is no known diagram of exactly how the bath house was laid out, the remains of its foundation, as well as documentation from other CCC camps, provide clues. It stands to reason that the water would have been pumped into a holding tank, and heated in a boiler before being delivered to the shower and wash rooms. You can identify the shower and wash rooms by looking for the X-shaped, sloping floors with the drains in the center., At the far left you can see the large channel, or sluice, that ran below the toilets. It collected the waste and carried it out of the bath house to a series of settling pits, where the effluent was treated, typically with powdered lime, on a daily basis., Although no photos of this bath house have been found, the building was likely similar in appearance to most of the other buildings at "Camp Alvin C. York" a wood frame structure with high windows, clapboard siding and roll roofing., While CCC records indicate that a standard camp configuration would have had separate shower and latrine buildings, that was not the case at this site. However, camp leaders did have some latitude on such matters, and so it is not unusual to see the two functions combined in one building at Camp S-67. , ...and sanitary! , From the time of the camp's inception in June of 1935 until January of 1937, the sewage from this bath house was treated by running it through a series of open pits that were dug into the hillside beyond the end of the bath house, to your left, which were treated with lime to control odor., As the waste gradually moved from pit to pit, solid matter settled out and the remaining water was gradually cleaned as it passed through layers of sand and mud. The last pit in this chain (in the photo below) can be seen next to the Grundy Day Loop trail; you may have noticed it as you passed by., While this system for treating the camp's bath house waste wasn't perfect, it was a reasonably effective way of cleaning up a messy by-product of camp life. In January of 1937, a more efficient septic tank system replaced some of the settling ponds, and flush toilets were installed, Inspection reports say that the tank was "pumped out as required.", Modern septic tanks work on the same basic principles as the camp's system - but with a modern septic system, all of the settling, percolation and purification happens in special pipes, known collectively as a drain field out of sight and underground., Photo caption (right): As you walk the Grundy Day Loop trail, look for the old concrete foundation at the base of the steps and footbridge next to Blue Hole. This is what remains of the CCC pump house that supplied water from Little Gizzard Creek to this bath house, as well as to the Camp's laundry facility, which you'll also see on this interpretive trail., Image caption (center): This is a likely layout of the bath house, based on what can be seen by examining the foundation, combined with information from other CCC and military facilities of that period., Photo caption (left): Don't be concerned these settling ponds haven't handled wastewater from the camp's bath house since 1938. Nature has long since neutralized any unpleasant microbes in these depressions.