Civilian
Conservation Corps Camp DG-32 (Co. 234)
1935-1942
During the Great Depression of the 1930's, CCC Camps were
scattered all over the USA. They provided gainful employment to youth of the
nation with work on public service projects. Between 1933 and 1942, four camps
were located near Moab. Each camp worked on various natural resource project for
the Soil Conservation Service, the National Park Service, and the forerunner of
the Bureau of Land Management.
DG-32 was a long-lasting camp and typical of most with wooden,
tar-paper covered barracks and buildings housing some 200 young men between the
ages of 18 and 25. Enrollees came from the eastern states, and leadership was
provided by the Army, Grazing Service, and local men experienced in construction
and stock grazing needs.
Under spartan conditions, clothing, food, and housing were
provided in the primitive camp. Pay was $30 per month with $25 sent home.
DG-32 projects included many range improvements: stock trails
down the precipitous sandstone cliffs, spring developments, wells and stock
ponds, eradication of rodents that competed with stock for feed, fences for
corrals and pastures, reservoir dams, roads and bridges. These projects provided
on the job training for the enrollees, besides the benefits they brought to the
local economy. Many of these works are still in use today. The value of the camp
and its works to Grand County is beyond estimation. It was a significant
milestone that greatly influenced the economic history of the county.
All that remains of the camp today are the cottonwood trees
planted by the enrollees that you see fronting this site, concrete slabs for
buildings, graveled roads and rock-outlined walkways, the remains of an old
windmill and a rock masonry water storage tank. These remnants signify the
moving history of a time when America valiantly struggled to restore its
economic stability and provide its young people with meaningful employment.
Japanese-American World War II Concentration
Camp
1943
On January 11, 1943, a train pulled into Thompson Station north
of here with armed Military Police guarding sixteen male American citizens of
Japanese ancestry. While the locals of the town waited to cross the tracks, the
entourage was loaded and transferred to the old abandoned "CCC" camp located
here at Dalton Wells.
Their crime? They were classified as "troublemakers" in the
Manzanar, California Relocation Center where they and their families had been
forcibly located at the start of World War II. Removed from their homes and
lands in California under a Presidential Executive Order, they were subject to
the whim and mercy of poorly-trained bureaucrats and military personnel in the
center. This Executive Presidential Order was the result of wartime hysteria,
racial bigotry, and greed.
The original sixteen men were removed from Manzanar and brought
here without the benefit of council. They did not have a formal hearing or
proper arrest proceedings, and the action was in total violation of their civil
rights. It was a process more compatible with fascism than democracy.
The inmates troubles worsened when and informer and confidant of
the administration was beaten. An organizer of the mess hall workers was thrown
into jail as a suspect. A meeting was held in the camp to protest the jailing
and a riot resulted. Two inmates were killed by trigger-happy soldiers.
Other Japanese-American men were soon brought to the camp.
Thirteen came from Gila River, Arizona, having been charged as being members of
an organization which was fully sanctioned by camp officials. Ten more came from
Manzanar as "suspected troublemakers." Fifteen came from the Tule Lake,
California, charged with refusing to register their availability for the draft
and their loyalty to the U.S. under a set of confusing, denigrating
requirements.
All these men were U.S. citizens; some were veterans of Work War
I, others were family men, college graduates, and responsible U.S.
citizens. Their incarceration here is a vivid example of how our
Japanese-American citizens were treated during World War II. May this sad, low
point in the history of our democracy never be forgotten, in the hope that it
will never happen again.
The group was transferred by truck to an abandoned Indian school
at Leupp, Arizona, on April 27, 1943. As those involved began to realize the
inequality of the situation, the inmates were released back to relocation
centers later that year. Thus, a black mark in the history of liberty and
justice in the United States was ended.