The
Civilian Conservation Corps (
CCC) was a public
work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families as part of the
New Deal. Originally for young men ages 18–23, it was eventually expanded to young men ages 17–28.
Robert Fechner was the head of the agency. It was a major part of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of
natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men, to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the
Great Depression in the United States while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000; in nine years 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 (about $547 in 2015) a month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families).