Mississippi's New Deal Conservation Areas

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is the most prominent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal conservation programs. Between 1933 and 1942 CCC labor provided the fuel that created conservation areas across the 48 states. That prominence is rooted in the physical legacy of parks, forests, and wildlife refuges that still endure. While that legacy is most evident in its first state parks, a broader exploration will reveal a much larger statewide conservation effort.

During the 1920s, American lumbering was centered on the Mid-South, including Mississippi. By 1926, the massive depletion of the state’s virgin timberlands, with minimal reforestation of the cutover region, prompted the Mississippi state legislature to establish the Mississippi Forestry Commission in order to control wildfires and encourage reforestation. Legislation also allowed the governor to accept gifts of land to be administered by the Commission as state forests and parks. The federal government was also authorized to acquire lands in the state to establish national forests. There would be no gifts until a New Deal conservation spurred interest in state parks; however, by 1933 the U.S. Forest Service was scouting areas in the state, and in 1936 four national forests were established in Mississippi.

The CCC and the First State Parks

At the same time, an early New Deal program offered federal financial assistance and labor for development of state parks. While the labor would be provided by the CCC at no cost, the state was required to provide the land. Capitalizing on new federal programs, the state legislature quickly passed legislation, allowing construction on Mississippi's state parks using state and county-donated land to begin in 1934.

By 1941, there were ten CCC-constructed state parks; chronologically, they were Leroy Percy, Legion, Holmes County, Clarkco, Tombigbee, Spring Lake (Wall Doxey today), Percy Quin, Tishomingo, Roosevelt, and Magnolia (acquired by Gulf Island National Seashore). The state parks were administered by the Mississippi Forestry Commission until 1956, when the Mississippi State Park Commission was established. While the CCC provided the labor, planning and development were supervised by the National Park Service. These state parks offer the finest examples of classic CCC/National Park Service “parkitecture” and rustic design in Mississippi.

The Resettlement Administration and Land Utilization Program

Today, Mississippi’s early state parks are the most celebrated legacy of the CCC, even though their development only covered well under 8,000 acres of land. While the early state parks were being constructed, the CCC and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) were reshaping the landscape on a much grander scale. They provided the labor for the federal Resettlement Administration’s land utilization (LU) projects, which transformed around 140,000 acres into conservation areas—a massive conservation effort that is rarely remembered today. While the CCC functioned as the workforce, various federal and state agencies supervised the operations, provided the funding, and designed the project plans. Created as an early New Deal agency, the Resettlement Administration was designed to resolve two intersecting national problems.
An agricultural problem, which had been festering for several decades, came to the forefront in the early 1930s as Franklin Roosevelt developed his New Deal programs to combat the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. The federal and state governments had encouraged aggressive policies to stimulate the settlement of their vast agricultural lands, resulting in the cultivation of millions of acres of submarginal farmland, defined as land incapable of producing profitable crops. This resulted in all sorts of problems for farm families: foreclosures, land abandonment, tax delinquencies, and huge personal hardships. Local governments were burdened by the unpaid property taxes affecting services like schools and roads, and many farm families were on relief rolls.

There was also a major conservation problem. The cultivation of submarginal land led to tremendous soil and water conservation issues. A large part of submarginal land included land that, if cultivated, made soil erosion virtually uncontrollable. The aim was to get submarginal land out of cultivation, and that created an immediate problem for farm families with little or no land that was suitable for farming. President Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration in 1935 to address the problem. It had a Division of Land Utilization to classify, identify, and purchase submarginal land and a Resettlement Division to relocate farm families who agreed to move from their submarginal farms. Land utilization is a branch of land economics with a goal of allocating land to uses where it can be most efficiently utilized: crops, pastures, or forests—or more specific uses like game refuges or recreation areas.

Between 1933 and 1946, the Land Utilization Program would purchase 11.3 million acres of submarginal agricultural land in 45 states. Nearly 25,000 families occupied the acquired land and were voluntarily resettled under the government program or relocated on their own. At first, land purchases were under emergency relief programs, with Congress formalizing the program under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937, where the Secretary of Agriculture was directed “to develop a program of land conservation and land utilization, in order to thereby correct maladjustments in land use.” The act specified that the adjustment would be to conservation uses, like reducing soil erosion, forestry, fish and wildlife conservation, development of recreational areas, and protecting watersheds.
While some of the acquired land was retained in federal ownership (in national forests, parks, and wildlife refuges), the program was intended to reclaim and develop the land into viable conservation projects and then transfer ownership to the states. There were 250 LU projects, and Mississippi was allocated three of them.

Mississippi’s Three LU Projects

The largest of Mississippi’s three LU projects, the Northeast Mississippi LU project (sometimes called the Choctaw Lake Project), was in Choctaw, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, and Winston counties. Planning for the project began in 1934. Its key purpose was to demonstrate how “worn-out, discarded acres,” a common problem across wide areas of the South, could be repurposed for conservation uses which would provide social and economic improvement to the region. The conservation issue at the root of the problem was described as: “Continuous cotton and corn plantings had drained the soil. Much of the woodlands had been burnt or had been skinned by cutting. Fields were gullied and exhausted.” The social and economic issue was centered on the 500 families, “fighting a losing battle for subsistence,” which would need to be resettled from the project area; most were tenant farmers or sharecroppers with an average family cash income of $125 per year, with 80 percent of the families on relief rolls. Those who qualified by farming ability and desired to be resettled on productive farmland were relocated to federal resettlement areas. Many chose to relocate on their own.

The project was developed between early 1935 and early 1938, ultimately accumulating about 89,000 acres. The four conservation objectives were to reclaim the submarginal farmland for forestry, recreational, grazing, and wildlife uses. While grazing is typically a land-use objective in the expansive western prairies, it was a central focus of this project. By 1938, the project had converted 4,000 acres of eroded cropland to grassland and was developing pasture on another 16,000 acres for dairy and beef cattle for “better, larger herds.” Most LU projects centered their recreational development around lakes, often developed as part of the project along streams. Four lakes were developed as part of this project: two large ones, 100-acre Choctaw Lake and 800-acre Bluff Lake, and two smaller ones, Cabin Lake and Patterson Lake. Choctaw Lake had a lodge building, recreation building, bathhouse, and picnic area. Forest development served as a primary initiative of the project. Designed to showcase the benefits of forest conservation on eroded soils, the effort resulted in the planting of over half a million trees and the clearing of hundreds of acres of worthless timber by 1938. Increased wildlife habitat and the planning of game food and cover crops produced a healthy wildlife population that showed annual increases.

The 28,000-acre Natchez Trace LU project in Chickasaw and Pontotoc counties was developed concurrently with the Northeast Mississippi project. About 180 families were resettled from the project area. The focus of the project was recreation and forestry, and it was also an area of heavily eroded land. Recreation was centered on 200-acre Davis Lake, which included a beach and two boat docks. Overlooking the lake, on a knoll, 13 family-size cabins were built. All construction on the project was accomplished using native materials (stone quarried and timber cut on the project by WPA workers). Timber stands in the forest were culled of worthless trees; 800,000 trees were planted by 1938, and two steel fire towers were constructed to aid in wildfire control. CCC crews implemented soil erosion control measures across 10,000 acres and developed 500 acres of pasture.

In 1938, Yalobusha County citizens proved successful in obtaining an LU project for their county. The Yalobusha LU project contained approximately 20,000 acres of “eroded, gullied, and unproductive” farmland where constant cotton farming had “impoverished farm and farmer.” About 80 families were resettled from the project. This LU project began at about the time the other two projects were being finished. Broad development was hindered because the CCC and WPA were phased out at the outbreak of World War II. Still, it was developed primarily for forest conservation and pasture while still including recreation and wildlife objectives, similar to the earlier LU projects.

LU Projects Divided Up

While LU projects were expected to eventually be transferred to state management and ownership, that did not always happen. A few LU projects located near national forests and national parks were incorporated into the federal units. What turned out to be problematic in some states was the reluctance of the state to accept an LU project. Acceptance meant agreeing to fund any ongoing construction needed on the project and funding all continuing management and maintenance costs. Given that many of the transfers came during the continuing Great Depression, some states were challenged to agree to the commitment.

There were efforts in Mississippi to secure state ownership of the LU projects. When the Northeast Mississippi LU project was dedicated in 1938, the plans were to convert it into a large dairy research unit while providing recreational opportunities under state management. The State Game and Fish Commission and the University of Mississippi were active contenders to gain project land; local counties opposed the transfer because federal ownership allowed 25 percent of revenue from land for counties instead of property taxes. Eventually, almost all the Mississippi LU projects would remain in federal ownership.

The only significant state ownership of LU land today is the John W. Starr Memorial Forest in Oktibbeha and Winston Counties. After two years of negotiations, in 1955, Mississippi State University acquired 8,274 acres from the Northeast Mississippi LU project for the experimental forest. The Natchez Trace LU project also lost 569 acres, which were transferred to the Natchez Trace Parkway. The remainder of the three LU projects went to national forests and the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge. In 1940, over 40,000 acres from the Northeast Mississippi LU project were used to create the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge. In 1959, three LU projects were added to Mississippi’s National Forests. The Northeast Mississippi LU project contributed 39,369 acres, and the Natchez Trace LU project contributed 25,863 acres to create the Tombigbee National Forest. Another 20,286 acres were added to the Holly Springs National Forest from the Yalobusha LU project in Yalobusha County (this is the Yalobusha Unit of the national forest today).

Though largely overlooked today, New Deal-era conservation efforts laid important groundwork for today's public lands. A defining quirk of Mississippi’s history is that these Depression-era projects were primarily absorbed into federal areas rather than state forests and parks, resulting in a very different public land framework than most of its Southern neighbors, who typically built up significant state-owned property from LU projects. Still, they continue to provide valuable environmental and conservation benefits to the state.

Dr. Thomas J. Straka is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation at Clemson University, where he retired in 2020 after more than 30 years of service. His research focuses on forest resource management and economics, forest valuation, forest policy, and forest history. Before joining Clemson, he served on the faculty at Mississippi State University for nearly eight years and worked as a forester for International Paper Company.