War Years and Civilian Conservation Corps
plays Critical Role in Building Forests
The DAR Plantation in winter at Mohican-Memorial Forest. This picture depicts some of the original plantings for the forest started in the late 1940s.
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 Additional
 Forest History |
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The Great Depression had a significant impact on the expansion and management of state forests during the 1930s. To ease the grip of economic blight, the federal government created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and several other work programs.
Through the CCC, thousands of young men planted millions of trees on Ohio's state forestlands, and built fire towers, recreation facilities, and hundreds of miles of roads throughout the state.
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| above: aerial photo of Mohican-Memorial State Forest taken in the mid-1940s. Hundreds of acres were reforested by the CCC during the period 1933-42. The fire tower is visible in the middle.
below: Mohican-Memorial State Forest now. Click on photo for a larger view.
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Another initiative, the Land Utilization Program, helped the division acquire more than 40,000 acres from the federal government during the late 1930s, which resulted in the creation of Blue Rock, Tar Hollow and Zaleski state forests.Thanks to a third federal program, the Works Progress Administration, a comprehensive project to survey all of Ohio's forests was conducted from 1937 to 1944.
The War Years of the early 1940s shaped a different agenda for state forests. With many of its young employees marching off to war, and with budgets and materials in short supply, the Division of Forestry stepped up timber production to meet the demand for war supplies. Numerous sawmills were located on state forests and run by state employees. The division built the first state-operated sawmill in 1928 at Scioto Trail State Forest and others were added over the next several decades.
Because the existing forest stands were in such poor condition at the time of acquisition, and because the chestnut blight had taken its toll on the forests, state forest crews conducted a massive timber-stand improvement project over much of the state forest lands.