Camp Growden
Camp Growden was a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, number F-62, located in the Sherman Creek Valley east of Sherman Pass and west of Kettle Falls in Ferry County, Washington, United States. The location had formerly been used as a stage stop on the dirt road between Meyers Falls and Republic, Washington between the 1900s and 1920s, while the whole of the area is land traditionally identified as part of the Colville People's territory. Five years before the establishment of Growden, the region was burned in the Dollar Mountain Fire, the largest wildfire seen in the national forest up to then.
The CCC established a presence in the Colville National Forest in the Spring of 1933 and founded Camp Growden in April 1934 which operated as a main CCC camp for the national forest until it was closed in the spring of 1941. The camp saw year round occupation between the spring of 1936 until May 1940. Growden was one of several CCC camps nationally given the name "Little America", due to the rotation of men stationed there from across the United States. After the decommissioning of the camp and control of the site being transferred to the National Forest all but one of the original buildings on site were removed.
By the 1950s it was a small National Forest campground and later transitioned to a rest stop and heritage site. A single outbuilding remains on site, a former changing room placed by Lake Sherman for the use of the CCC men. Growden Dam and Lake Sherman, built by the Camp on the property in the 1930s were removed in the early 2010s due to a number of concerns regarding flooding instability, water heating, and poor wetlands ecology. Sherman Creek on the site was restored to a free flowing stream with the dam removal and interpretive signage added discussing the history of the stream.
Early land use
Prior to the 1900s the area that would become Camp Growden was used by the Colville people and as an east-west travel route to the Sanpoil lands over the Kettle River crest. In the late 1800s a series of stage stops up the Sherman Creek valley had been established to facilitate the trade trail between Kettle Falls and Republic, Washington. One of the stops was placed at the confluence of Sherman and Lane Creeks and operated by Edmund and Amanda Growden. The lands around the Growden stage stop were extensively logged in the 1920s by operations of the White Pine Sash Company and then the Hedlund Lumber Company. Both groups developed a network of roads, log flumes, logging railroads, and buildings in the eastern to central regions of Sherman Creek Valley. A good portion of the valley area was burned by the 1929 Dollar Mountain Fire, resulting in the loss of much of the buildings and other infrastructure which had been built from 1900 to 1928. Clear cutting across the south facing mountain slopes and over the valley bottom east of Canyon Creek has been noted as a major fire break that stalled the burn progress through the area. The Growden Ranger Station survived and was still in use in 1931 when the initial survey work for what would become highway 20 passed through the valley.1933 Inland Northwest Civilian Conservation Corps
In response to the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a series of New Deal programs including the establishment of a Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC program was set up within a month of its authorization and by May 1933, the CCC's inland Northwest presence was established. The district was named for Fort George Wright in Spokane, Washington, which was the headquarters for the Fort George Wright District, and overseen by the Ninth Corps area command. Work in the Colville National Forest by the CCC started in spring 1933 with three temporary tent camps, T-4 Togo on Deadman Creek, T-5 Leese on Lost Lake near Mount Bonaparte, and T-6 Midget on Bolder Creek pass. Each was a tent camp set up with no permanent structures and over the summer worked on a number of projects. In November 1933 all three camps were closed.Off and on occupation
In Spring 1934 two camps were opened in the forest, F-63 a tent camp south of Republic at Quartz Mountain east of the Sanpoil River named Camp McMann, and the first permanent camp of the forest, F-62 which was called Camp Growden. July 1934 saw the announcement of select "frame" or permanent camps with buildings that would be operating throughout the coming winter of 1934–35. Camp Growden was included among the camps to operate, with new buildings to be constructed in anticipation for winter and the camp would be keeping the company of men present that summer. After the winter thaw, the Growden leadership and company were moved to F-82 Camp Pierre Lake, which was a bit east of Orient in Stevens County, Washington. At the end of fall 1935, all CCC work in the forest was halted and no CCC men were present for that winter. With the start of spring 1936, the CCC returned staffing and men to Camp Growden and maintained that staffing continually through May 1940. At that point the company was moved to F-104 "Camp Lost Lake", a newer camp location a few miles from the original Camp Leese at Mount Boneparte and near Wauconda, Washington. In October 1940 the company was again transferred back to Camp Growden for overwintering, the last time the camp would see occupation. The company was moved back to Camp Lost Lake in the Spring of 1941 for the last time, and CCC activity in the northern Colville National Forest ceased with the coming of fall 1941. The war efforts surrounding World War II having created a growing jobs market resulted in few candidates for the spartan 6 month job stints provided by the CCC, and the whole program was defunded by Congress the next year. The assets of the CCC, including Camp Growden were ordered to be liquidated by congress on July 2, 1942 and the process was reported as essentially complete on June 30, 1943.Camp life
Camp Growden was located at the junction of Lane Creek and Sherman Creek, in conjunction with the existing Growden Ranger Station. Both were next to what was then the unimproved freight road to Republic and about west of Kettle Falls, Washington. As a national forest CCC camp, the yearly work included many yearly forest management tasks such as firefighting, logging, and replanting burns. Furthering those tasks was the building of roads, campgrounds, and fire lookouts across the Colville National Forest. CCC camps were structured around 200-person companies, with officers coming from the military branches. The enrollees were allowed two years or four enrollments at most in the CCC, with each enrollment term being 6 months. Meals included items such as beans, mashed potatoes, venison and pie. The pay was given as a monthly salary, and of the, the men only got for pay, while the other was deducted and sent to the family as a support during the depression.By the Spring of 1941, the camp complex included a number of buildings and maintained lawns alongside the now-full Lake Sherman. The campus included barracks, a recreation building, and storage buildings. Housed in the various buildings, the CCC facilities provided a mess hall, library, injury ward and dispensary, machine shop, and education room. There were free classes on various skills and hobby work like shortwave radio, photography, weaving and wood burning. The recreation hall was built to accommodate up to 200 people at a time and included pool tables and a fireplace. Off-duty time could be spent playing board and card games or watching the weekly movie shown in the hall.
The camp worked closely with the Colville National Forest on most of its projects, acting as a body of reserve men for various needs. From 1936 to 1939 cooperative projects between the camp and national forest saw the erection of a number of buildings over the forest, including homes in Kettle Falls, Republic, and Tonasket for Forest Service officers. Scattered over the forest were guard stations and lookout tower units for wildland fire needs, plus machine shops and storage sheds to house needed equipment and supplies. The public benefited from the building and maintenance of range land feedways to feed roaming livestock herds, and with the hazard mitigation work in older fire scars such as the massive 1929 Dollar Mountain burn. Occasionally the CCC men were recruited to assist in game surveys of the forest and grazing land and timber surveying. A number of letters from former enrollees indicated the specialized training needed for the various cooperative projects was key in finding a stable job after the enrollment term finished and the men returned to the workforce.
1934
An official announcement of the first Fort Wright District camps of 1934 was published around April 10, 1934. A total of 20 camps were initially to be staffed by April 16 and 20 with nine full companies travelling up from duty in California and 11 "cadres" from California or Vancouver, Washington. Camp Growden, along with Camp McMann south of Republic, was slated to receive the Vancouver cadres arriving in Spokane on the 20th before travelling up to the Colville National Forest. Each of the cadres was comprised of an officer and 25 CCC enrollees, who would be in charge of preparing the chosen camp location for the arrival of the main company about 10 days later. The main body of company 602 travelled from Spokane to Camp Growden on April 26 with company 605 who continued west to Camp McMann. The summer of 1934 was mostly dedicated to firefighting in the region, including the massive Aeneas Creek Fire east of Curlew, Washington that took an estimated 2,000 firefighters to contain. At the same time, other fires in the national forest burned an additional, and fire efforts on all the blazes required help from the neighboring national forest units in the region. As a result, other CCC-designated projects were delayed until late in the year after the fires were contained or out.On August 28, the contracts to supply construction materials for Camp Growden's winterization and permanent building were announced. Companies in Colville and Lewiston, Idaho each got a contract while groups of businesses in Spokane secured the other five. The materials to be supplied included lumber, millwork, hardware, roofing, plumbing, and electrical. In late September the list of camps in the district which would be remaining operating during the coming winter. Camp Growden was one of only ten camps to be chosen, out of the 41 open over the summer in the district. The major portion of the CCC men, around 8,000 were to be transferred south to California and another 2,000 were sent back east for release. Over the next month the preparations for company transitioning took place, with the last 80 men from Camp McMann moved over to Growden and the whole of the current company 602 working on finishing work for a winterized camp. In addition to the building work, a group of men completed the planting of approximately 65,000 two-year-old ponderosa saplings, covering about of Sherman Creek Watershed. Around November 1 the entire company was also transferred to California work and a new company slated to arrive for the winter season.
November 14 saw Lieutenant Commander Clarence L. Bradfield commanding the new 184-man Company 950 had arrived and settled into camp. The company had been relocated from Camp Sullivan Lake in Idaho. The main tasks for 950 would be road building, stringing telephone lines, hazard mitigation and replanting trees. A small 16-man contingent was split out to "spike camp" in Republic. The group was bunked at the Republic ranger station and tasked with continuing Camp McMann tasks such as finishing building two houses for Rangers and a rockery wall. Two major road building projects were taken up by the 950 in November, with the continuation of Barnaby Creek road around Barnaby Butte and connecting Sherman Creek road to the Lake Ellen area in the southeast corner of the national forest. They also started work on the new Skalawag Ridge road, running up from the South Fork Sherman Creek road to the Skalawag Ridge lookout on top of the mountain overlooking Camp Growden. In camp itself, general clean up work accompanied drainage field construction and sidewalk installation. By December 19, of the Skalawag Ridge road had been completed, with CCC personnel estimating it would be finished by January 1935. With snow coming into the region, telephone line work towards Stahley and White Mountains would continue as long as snow allows, with already finished. At camp, early land clearing work was started for the proposed Lake Sherman with about being impacted. The Republic spike camp was moved into winter housing there and prep work had started in Kettle Falls to establish a similar spike camp situation. As with the Republic crew, the Kettle Falls men would be tasked with building a warehouse, several residences, and a ranger station.