On March 21, 1933, with the nation in darkest despair because of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects. Thus, just seventeen days after taking office, Roosevelt’s New Deal had launched the mobilization of the largest peacetime labor army in American history–helping to save not only the nation’s long-neglected natural resources, but also its vastly underemployed youth.
In the Shadow of the Mountain recounts the story of Edwin G. Hill, a typical recruit who spent “the most enjoyable and rewarding years” of his life in the Civilian Conservation Corps–the “We can take it” boys. Hill was enrolled for a year at Camp Hard Labor Creek in Georgia and for two years in Washington state in the great “shadow” of Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens. He recounts how recruits gained hope where there was none before, learned skills for lifelong occupations, received education, laughed and roughhoused, met and married local girls, and answered their nation’s call during World War II, when nearly 3,000,000 CCC men, accustomed to barracks life and toughened by outdoor work, made a substantial contribution to America’s ultimate victory.
