Tackling Hard Histories in Penn’s Woods: Exploratory Archaeology of Two Segregated CCC Camps

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Public Lands, Public Sites: Research, Engagement, and Collaboration" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A number of recent initiatives including the development of a Cultural Resources Program, Untold Stories interpretative work, and programming like Penn’s Parks for All at Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) had the cumulative effect of providing multiple opportunities for the agency to undertake telling the hard histories of Penn’s woods. In partnership with the Student Conservation Association, DCNR’s Pennsylvania Outdoor Corps created the Cultural Resources Crew to undertake inventory, compliance, and research projects. Tackling our hard histories is a central focus of the new CR program and its crew’s research, as it involves those stories left unsaid or untold due to limited traditional sources or a general unwillingness to talk about subjects like segregation and underrepresentation of various populations on public lands. In 2022, the crew’s archaeological investigations focused on mapping and metal detecting two segregated Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps (Companies 361-C and 2312-C) at Penn-Roosevelt and Pymatuning State Parks. The archaeology and interpretation of these sites helps to uncover the experiences and tell the stories of the young Black men living in the camps planting the industrially ravaged landscape and building a parks and forests infrastructure system in use today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Public Lands, Public Sites: Research, Engagement, and Collaboration   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36594.0