CCC Camp Gooseberry Falls Minnesota

On any trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area the classic stopping off point is Gooseberry Falls State Park.  Rustic paths, a nice visitor center and naturally some picturesque water falls.

On our recent voyage north we did stop off there, and I discovered something that I really should have already known....it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and there was a sizable CCC camp at the site.  

The CCC built a lot of things out of cement and stone....starting with the supports of the park entry sign.

The biggest project was a retaining wall designed to look like a castle.  This picture does not do it justice, it is 300 feet long.

Some of the old CCC built structures are gone, others remain.  Here is an ice house.

Of course I had to poke about and find evidence of the actual camp, not just the park structures that the CCC boys were there to build.  It takes a little doing, but once you adjust your eye the main streets of the camp are visible as areas with less in the way of mature trees.  Then you just start looking for traces...

A sizable foundation with a ramp.

A smaller, more subtle foundation.

This looks like some kind of boiler or hot water heater.  The CCC camp was in operation from 1934 until 1941.  The next year most of the camp buildings were intentionally burned down.  This might be a newer relic.  

Some sort of drain, a ceramic pipe heading down into the ground.

Remarkably the CCC era is now far enough in the past to qualify as archaeology.  This 2008 article describes excavations of the CCC structures by members of a modern revival of CCC, the Minnesota Conservation Corps.  Given the mere 66 year gap from abandonment to excavation it is quite possible that a few elderly gents might have wandered by and told the kids they were digging in the wrong places!

A nice map of the park highlighting the CCC built structures can be found HERE.