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Trail Construction: Building the Miry Ridge Trail, 1934 or 1935

From 1933 to 1942, three million CCC workers altered natural landscapes for use by Americans. Nationally, CCC crews cleared thirteen thousand miles of hiking trails, built forty-six thousand bridges for vehicles, and stocked America’s rivers with over one million fish while creating eight hundred new state parks. This photograph shows young CCC workers blazing what would become the Miry Ridge Trail, which allowed visitors to more directly experience the CCC-enhanced beauty of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Source: National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=867212&id=C3E65DBB-1DD8-B71C-07F9E79D2A18973C&gid=C27A6BCE-1DD8-B71C-07E804E0164E3E31.

Who Built America? An Open Educational Resource has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and funding from The Ford Foundation, Digital Scholar, and the City University of New York Central Office of Library Services. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Open Educational Resource, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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