Founded in 1933 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat unemployment throughout the Nation, the Civilian Conservation Corp, or CCC, was responsible for shaping the national park experience prior to Mission 66. The contributions of the CCC were, and remain, many and varied.
This installment of “Spotlight on Rustic Architecture” features a log ranger cabin constructed by the CCC in Jewel Cave National Monument, South Dakota in 1935. Now restored, the structure is a three room, one-story log cabin approximately 34 X 24 feet in a T-plan with a front porch supported by log columns. A shallow intersecting gable end roof caps the structure with cedar shakes and a log ridgepole. The walls are distinct with white chinking and saddle-notched corners with whittle-ends extending 24 inches beyond the building. The foundation is stone.
The building is, as Harvey Kaiser states in his book The National Park Architecture Sourcebook “a superb example of rustic design and construction.” The structure is both compatible with the environment though the use of simple forms and natural materials, and was praised in Albert Good’s 1938 Park and Recreation Structures as an ideal example of log cabin structural techniques.
For more information on the CCC:
John C. Paige, “The Civilian Conservation Corp and the National Park Service, 1933-1942: An Administrative History.” 1985.
For more information on Jewel Cave National Monument, visit their website, http://www.nps.gov/jeca/index.htm
The Historic Structure Report, Cultural Landscape Report, and Historic Resource Study for Jewel Cave are also available on the Jewel Cave website here. Scroll down to “Additional Information.”
*Photographs from the Ranger Cabin Historic Structure Report, 1999
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