Rabideau visitors can see real CCC camp

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

June 11, 1996

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

This summer, visitors will have a chance to see what a real Civilian Conservation Corps camp looked like while they were in operation. Camp Rabideau will host three or four living history programs this year, said Peggy Irish, Camp Rabideau project coordinator.

Volunteers have agreed to dress and act like certain key figures in the CCC camps and will live out sort of a day-in-the-life program for spectators, she said.

This will all be a buildup to an event in September that the Camp Rabideau Project team expects to be a learning experience, Irish said.

A national reunion of those who worked in CCC camps between 1933 and 1942 is scheduled for September. The volunteers working at Camp Rabideau hope to have a special living history program following that reunion, so that those who attend can relive the days in the camps, she said.

"It's a wonderful opportunity to interview people who lived through the Depression," she said, "and to preserve a memory of the accomplishments of that time period."

Irish said the CCC enrollees added a lot of value to the nation's national forests, national parks and transportation systems. That is why the Camp Rabideau Project Team works hard to preserve one of the few remaining camps, she said.

Visitors interested in the living history programs may contact the camp at 835-4291. Camp Rabideau is located seven miles south of Blackduck, on County Route 39.