Laundry and Leaders

Laundry and Leaders. Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1475, Camp S-67, Tracy City. This foundation appears to be that of a utility building, likely a laundry facility which was probably filled with washtubs, owing to the concrete floor, rusted water supply pipe, large central drain and open drainage ditch beyond the foundation, but no settling pits., CCC enrollees were expected to do their own personal laundry, one inspection report noted that "all men have been instructed in the proper method of washing woolen garments." Sheets and pillow cases were described as being "very dirty," but these were sent to an off-site laundry to be cleaned, three times per month. The men of Company 1475 likely washed their personal laundry in this building, and hung their clothes out to dry on clotheslines, as did the men in this CCC photo (above left) from a camp out west., Camp leadership , When the company was created on June 22, 1933, it began as a tent camp, P-62 in Palmer, about 10 miles northeast of where you now stand. Whether by design or chance, the company had a number of different Army officers in charge, including the camp's Corpsman (doctor), who was shared with several other camps in the region, and an Education director., For much of the company's tenure in Palmer, and later, here at Grundy Forest, civilian Herman Baggenstoss served as the Camp Superintendent. When Herman stepped down in 1936, one of his assistants, William V Lightfoot, by training a Civil Engineer, took over as Superintendent, and oversaw the company's move from this site to a new camp, S-80, about 11 miles southwest of here, near what is now Jumpoff Road in Sewanee., Education was a major component of the CCC's mission. In the company's early days, George Adams and William Metcalf led Company 1475's education effort; later on, here at Grundy Forest, Robley N. Jobe guided the delivery of classes on topics as varied as Taxidermy, Cooking and Blasting (the safe use of dynamite), and also offered literacy classes for the many young men who came to the CCC unable to read or write., Uncovering the story of Camp S-67 , Almost 80 years to the day after "Camp Alvin C. York" was abandoned, volunteers from the Friends of South Cumberland State Park, working under the supervision of South Cumberland State Park Rangers, began to carefully remove eight decades of nature's reclamation of this site., They made detailed notes as they went, piecing together the story of this camp by combining what they saw as they uncovered these concrete foundations with what they learned by researching old CCC records, documents, news archives, photos and oral histories from area residents., Not all the pieces of this story have been found, but they have provided enough information to offer plausible hypotheses about some of the missing pieces., As you walk through the camp today, be your own history detective by being observant about things you see on this site, and by carefully studying what you see on these interpretive panels. Perhaps you'll be able to put together some new pieces of this history puzzle!, Photo caption (top center): This foundation as it appeared prior to being uncovered., Photo caption (bottom center): A group photo of Company 1475's officers and leaders, posed on the camp's perimeter road, looking south toward the Mess Hall (visible at the far end of the road). When you reach the interpretive panel labeled "Life in Company 1475." you will be standing roughly where this photo was taken. This photo appears to have been taken shortly after the camp's establishment in 1935., Photo caption (bottom right): The photos at night show part of the process of uncovering the foundation of the company bath house and latrine Old CCC records helped confirm many of the volunteers' hunches about the purpose of the buildings that once stood on these concrete slabs.