Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men. For young men ages 18–25, it was expanded to ages 17–28. Robert Fechner was the first director of the agency, succeeded by James McEntee following Fechner's death; the CCC was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal and local governments; the CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000. Through the course of its nine years in operation, 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter and food, together with a wage of $30 per month; the American public made the CCC the most popular of all the New Deal programs.
Sources written at the time claimed an individual's enrollment in the CCC led to improved physical condition, heightened morale, increased employability. The CCC led to a greater public awareness and appreciation of the outdoors and the nation's natural resources, the continued need for a planned, comprehensive national program for the protection and development of natural resources; the CCC operated separate programs for Native Americans. 15,000 Native Americans participated in the program, helping them weather the Great Depression. By 1942, with World War II and the draft in operation, the need for work relief declined, Congress voted to close the program; as governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had run a similar program on a much smaller scale. Long interested in conservation, as president, he proposed to Congress a full-scale national program on March 21, 1933: I propose to create to be used in complex work, not interfering with normal employment and confining itself to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control, similar projects.
I call your attention to the fact that this type of work is of definite, practical value, not only through the prevention of great present financial loss but as a means of creating future national wealth. He promised this law would provide 250,000 young men with meals, housing and medical care for working in the national forests and other government properties; the Emergency Conservation Work Act was introduced to Congress the same day and enacted by voice vote on March 31. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6101 on April 5, 1933, which established the CCC organization and appointed a director, Robert Fechner, a former labor union official who served until 1939; the organization and administration of the CCC was a new experiment in operations for a federal government agency. The order indicated that the program was to be supervised jointly by four government departments: Labor, which recruited the young men, which operated the camps, Agriculture and Interior, which organized and supervised the work projects.
A CCC Advisory Council was composed of a representative from each of the supervising departments. In addition, the Office of Education and Veterans Administration participated in the program. To end the opposition from labor unions Roosevelt chose Robert Fechner, vice president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, as director of the corps. William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor, was taken to the first camp to demonstrate that there would be no job training involved beyond simple manual labor. Reserve officers from the U. S. Army were in charge of the camps. General Douglas MacArthur was placed in charge of the program but said that the number of Army officers and soldiers assigned to the camps was affecting the readiness of the Regular Army, but the Army found numerous benefits in the program. When the draft began in 1940, the policy was to make CCC alumni sergeants. CCC provided command experience to Organized Reserve Corps officers. Through the CCC, the Regular Army could assess the leadership performance of both Regular and Reserve Officers.
The CCC provided lessons which the Army used in developing its wartime and mobilization plans for training camps. The legislation and mobilization of the program occurred quite rapidly. Roosevelt made his request to Congress on March 21, 1933; the first CCC enrollee was selected April 8, subsequent lists of unemployed men were supplied by state and local welfare and relief agencies for immediate enrollment. On April 17, the first camp, NF-1, Camp Roosevelt, was established at George Washington National Forest near Luray, Virginia. On June 18, the first of 161 soil erosion control camps was opened, in Alabama. By July 1, 1933 there were 1,463 working camps with 250,000 junior enrollees; the typical CCC enrollee was a U. S. citizen, unemployed male, 18–25 years of age. His family was on local relief; each enrollee volunteered and, upon passing a physical exam and/or a period of conditioning, was required to serve a minimum six-month period, with the
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail known as the Appalachian Trail or the A. T. is a marked hiking trail in the Eastern United States extending between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine. The trail is about 2,200 miles long, though the exact length changes over time as parts are modified or rerouted; the Appalachian Trail Conservancy describes the Appalachian Trail as the longest hiking-only trail in the world. More than 2 million people are said to take a hike on part of the trail at least once each year; the idea of the Appalachian Trail came about in 1921. The trail itself was completed in 1937 after more than a decade of work, although improvements and changes continue, it is maintained by 31 trail clubs and multiple partnerships, managed by the National Park Service, United States Forest Service, the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Most of the trail is in forest or wild lands, although some portions traverse towns and farms, it passes through 14 states: Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine.
Thru-hikers attempt to hike the trail in its entirety in a single season. The number of thru-hikes per year has increased with 715 northbound and 133 southbound thru-hikes reported for 2017. Many books, documentaries and fan organizations are dedicated to the pursuit; some hike from one end to the other turn around and thru-hike the trail the other way, known as a "yo-yo". An extension known as the International Appalachian Trail continues northeast, crossing Maine and cutting through Canada to Newfoundland, with sections continuing in Greenland, through Europe, into Morocco. Other separate extensions continue the southern end of the Appalachian range in Alabama and continue south into Florida, creating what is known as the Eastern Continental Trail; the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail form what is known as the Triple Crown of Hiking in the United States. The trail was conceived by Benton MacKaye, a forester who wrote his original plan—called "An Appalachian Trail, A Project in Regional Planning"—shortly after the death of his wife in 1921.
MacKaye's idea detailed a grand trail that would connect a series of farms and wilderness work/study camps for city-dwellers. In 1922, at the suggestion of Major William A. Welch, director of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, his idea was publicized by Raymond H. Torrey with a story in the New York Evening Post under a full-page banner headline reading "A Great Trail from Maine to Georgia!" The idea was adopted by the new Palisades Interstate Park Trail Conference as their main project. On October 7, 1923, the first section of the trail, from Bear Mountain west through Harriman State Park to Arden, New York, was opened. MacKaye called for a two-day Appalachian Trail conference to be held in March 1925 in Washington, D. C; this meeting inspired the formation of the Appalachian Trail Conference. A retired judge named Arthur Perkins and his younger associate Myron Avery took up the cause. In 1929, a member of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association and its Blue Blazed Trails committee, found Ned Anderson, a farmer in Sherman, who took on the task of mapping and blazing the Connecticut leg of the trail.
It ran from Dog Tail Corners in Webatuck, New York, which borders Kent, Connecticut, at Ashley Falls, 50 miles through the northwest corner of the state, up to Bear Mountain at the Massachusetts border. Anderson's efforts helped spark renewed interest in the trail, Avery was able to bring other states on board. Upon taking over the ATC, Avery adopted the more practical goal of building a simple hiking trail, he and MacKaye clashed over the ATC's response to a major commercial development along the trail's path. Avery reigned as Chairman of the ATC from 1932 to 1952. Avery became the first to walk the trail end-to-end, though not as a thru-hike, in 1936. In August 1937, the trail was completed to Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine, the ATC shifted its focus toward protecting the trail lands and mapping the trail for hikers. Many of the trail's present highlights were not part of the trail in 1937: Roan Mountain, North Carolina and Tennessee. Except for places where the Civilian Conservation Corps was brought in, the original trail climbed straight up and down mountains, creating rough hiking conditions and a treadway prone to severe erosion.
The ATC's trail crews and volunteer trail-maintaining clubs have relocated or rehabilitated miles of trail since that time. In 1936, a 121-day Maine to Georgia veteran's group funded and supported thru-hike was reported to have been completed, with all but three miles of the new trail cleared and blazed, by six Boy Scouts from New York City and their guides; the completed thru-hike was much recorded and accepted by the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association. In 1938, the trail sustained major damage from a hurricane; this happened right before the start of World War II
Natural monument
A natural monument is a natural or natural/cultural feature of outstanding or unique value because of its inherent rarity, representative of aesthetic qualities or cultural significance. Under World Commission on Protected Areas guidelines, natural monuments are level III, described as: "Areas are set aside to protect a specific natural monument, which can be a landform, sea mount, submarine cavern, geological feature such as a cave or a living feature such as an ancient grove, they are quite small protected areas and have high visitor value."This is a lower level of protection than level II and level I. The European Environment Agency's guidelines for selection of a natural monument are: The area should contain one or more features of outstanding significance. Appropriate natural features include waterfalls, craters, fossil beds, sand dunes and marine features, along with unique or representative fauna and flora; the area should be large enough to protect the integrity of the feature and its related surroundings.
Natural monument signs selection IUCN Protected Area Management Categories: Category III Natural Monument or Feature U. S. National Monument World Conservation Union A-Z of Areas of Biodiversity Importance: Natural Monument or Feature Natural Monuments in Brazil
Moores Creek National Battlefield
Moores Creek National Battlefield is a United States National Battlefield managed by the National Park Service. The park commemorates the 1776 victory by a thousand Patriots over about eight hundred Loyalists at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge; the battle dashed the hopes of Royal Governor Josiah Martin of the Province of North Carolina for regaining control of the colony for the British crown. The Loyalist defeat ended British plans for an invasionary force to land in Brunswick Town, North Carolina. North Carolina voted to declare independence from the British on April 12, 1776, shortly after the victory at Moore's Creek, located in the Wilmington area near Currie in Pender County in southeastern North Carolina; the park was established as a National Military Park on June 2, 1926 and was redesignated as a National Battlefield on September 8, 1980. Loyalists Scottish Highlanders, many of whom did not have muskets and were wielding broadswords, expected to find only a small Patriot force on February 27, 1776.
Before the arrival of the Loyalists, the Patriots removed the planks from the bridge that crossed Moore's Creek. After removing the planks of wood, they smeared; this forced the Loyalists to cross the bridge in single file. As the Loyalists advanced across the bridge, Patriot shots rang out and dozens of Loyalists fell into the creek below, including their commanders. At the time, the creek was an estimated six feet deep. One commander, Lieutenant Colonel Donald McLeod, died in the battle. Another commander was Colonel Allan MacDonald, the husband of Flora MacDonald of Highland lore who aided Bonnie Prince Charlie following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden Moor in 1746. Stunned and leaderless, the Loyalists either surrendered or retreated in confusion. Wagons and British Pound sterling worth more than $1 million by today's value were seized by the Patriots in the days following the battle; this dramatic victory ended British authority in the colony and influenced North Carolina to be the first colony to vote for independence.
The Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, coupled with the Battle of Sullivan's Island near Charleston, South Carolina, a few months were the first open conflicts of the American Revolution. Both led the Thirteen Colonies to declare independence on July 4, 1776; the central Moores Creek most was named in honor of Elizabeth Moore, a pioneer settler. Throughout the park, there are remnants of the 1776 road traveled by Loyalist forces. A 1-mile trail with wayside exhibits leads across Moores Creek; the historic bridge site is located along the trail. The park, located in a rural area, offers a visitor center with exhibits and audio-visual program, a 0.3-mile colonial forest trail, a picnic area. Official National Park Service website: Moores Creek National Battlefield "Mary Slocumb at Moore's Creek Bridge," Revolutionary North Carolina, a digital textbook produced by the UNC School of Education
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west, Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east. North Carolina is the 28th-most extensive and the 9th-most populous of the U. S. states. The state is divided into 100 counties; the capital is Raleigh, which along with Durham and Chapel Hill is home to the largest research park in the United States. The most populous municipality is Charlotte, the second-largest banking center in the United States after New York City; the state has a wide range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to 6,684 feet at Mount Mitchell, the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. The climate of the coastal plains is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. More than 300 miles from the coast, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate. Woodland-culture Native Americans were in the area around 1000 BCE.
During this time, important buildings were constructed as flat-topped buildings. By 1550, many groups of American Indians lived in present-day North Carolina, including Chowanoke, Pamlico, Coree, Cape Fear Indians, Waxhaw and Catawba. Juan Pardo explored the area in 1566–1567, establishing Fort San Juan in 1567 at the site of the Native American community of Joara, a Mississippian culture regional chiefdom in the western interior, near the present-day city of Morganton; the fort lasted only 18 months. A expedition by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe followed in 1584, at the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh. In June 1718, the pirate Blackbeard ran his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia.
In 1996 Intersal, Inc. a private firm, discovered the remains of a vessel to be the Queen Anne's Revenge, added to the US National Register of Historic Places. North Carolina became one of the English Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was known as the Province of North-Carolina; the northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1729. Settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker and German immigrants. A majority of the colonists supported the American Revolution, a smaller number of Loyalists than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, New York. During colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, New Bern was selected as the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771.
In 1788 Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the "lost colony" on Roanoke Island; the population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia and Pennsylvania plus immigrants from abroad. North Carolina made the smallest per-capita contribution to the war of any state, as only 7,800 men joined the Continental Army under General George Washington. There was some military action in 1780–81. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District, but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands, it ceded them to the national government so that the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally. After 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops.
The eastern half of the state the Tidewater region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly 3 percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered more than 10,000; the western areas were dominated by white families Scots-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence in the West. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835 the legislature withdrew their right to vote. On May 20, 1861, North Carolina was the last of the Confederate states to declare secession from the Union, 13 days after the Tennessee legislature voted for secession; some 125,000 North Carolinians served in the military.
Waterrock Knob
Waterrock Knob is a mountain peak in the U. S. state of North Carolina. It is the highest peak in the Plott Balsams and is the 16th-highest mountain in the Eastern United States; the mountain is a popular destination with tourists and amateur hikers, as it is accessible from the parkway. A visitors' center is located near its summit and a hiking trail leads to its top; the hiking trail and visitors' center are manned and maintained by the National Park Service, part of the United States Department of the Interior. Waterrock Knob is named as such because of a spring located near the summit where hunters would refill their canteens. With an elevation of 6,292 feet, Waterrock Knob is the highest peak in the Plott Balsams and is the 13th-highest mountain in the Eastern United States if using a 160 feet prominence rule; the mountain is split by both Jackson counties in the western mountains of the state. The mountain's summit is located within the Blue Ridge Parkway National Park Service unit. Cherokee is located about 10 miles to the west, while Richland Balsam is located about 10 miles to the southeast.
Waterrock Knob's summit can be accessed from the Waterrock Knob Visitor Center, located a milepost 451.2 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This 0.6 miles long trail ascends over 400 feet from visitor center's parking lot and is paved for the first quarter mile. List of mountains in North Carolina
