Civilian Conservation Corps, Learn Their Importance To Bartow

CARTERSVILLE, GA -- Join the Bartow History Museum April 17, at noon, to hear guest speaker, Donna Coffey Little, speak on Bartow County's Forgotten CCC Camps. During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, was a program that allowed unemployed young men to help support their families while improving America's ailing fields and forests through planting trees and fighting fires and erosion.

Few remember that Bartow County had its own CCC camp in Cartersville and that there was another CCC camp at the foot of Pine Log Mountain, near Beasley's Gap, right at the Bartow/Cherokee border.

The young men from these camps built the first roads to the top of Pine Log Mountain, as well as the fire tower and ranger house. The Cartersville CCC camp also helped Bartow County farmers to mitigate erosion through terracing, planting trees, and building check dams. The lecture is free for members and included in the price of admission for non-members.

Dr. Donna Coffey Little teaches at Reinhardt University and founded Reinhardt's Etowah Valley Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing. She lives on a farm in Bartow County and is writing a book about Pine Log Mountain.

Her publications include her chapbook Fire Street and poems in Leaping Clear, Calyx, Garrtsiluni, The Honey Land Review, Sugar Mule, Prime Mincer, Mom Egg, The Comstock Review, The Evening Street Review, The Atlanta Review and The Florida Review. You can follow her blog at etowahvalleypilgrimage.com.

The Bartow History Museum, located at 4 East Church Street in downtown Cartersville, Georgia, documents the history of northwest Georgia’s Bartow County, spanning more than 200 years since the Cherokee were the area’s primary residents. Artifacts, photographs, documents, and a variety of interactive permanent exhibits tell the story of settlement, Cherokee life and removal, Civil War strife, and lifestyles of years past. The Bartow History Museum also provides a variety of educational opportunities for adults, children, families, and school groups. Our extensive archives and research library contains photographs, documents, newspapers, rare books, genealogy records, oral history interviews, and more.