CCC Camp Globe

 A sign along a lonesome dirt road.

I've been interested in Camp Globe for several years.  Ever since I ran across a copy of the camp newspaper in the archives at UW Eau Claire.  It is such an interesting name.  And the front page of the newsletter shows this:

I really liked the big globes on top of the gate posts.  CCC camps often had interesting features of this sort at their entries.

It says on the sign, this camp was in operation from 1933 to 1942, although if true the last few years it would have only been home to a few caretakers.  In 1937 there was a general scaling back of the CCC system and the local paper says Globe was closed at that time.  I'll have to look at a few more of these signs but suspect the dates given are "generic" for the CCC program in a general - or shall we say global - sense.

In its heyday it had about 200 "CCC boys" mostly doing forestry work and fire fighting.  It had a telephone system, a hospital, fire lookout towers.  It had the usual sports and educational programs.  There were dances where an evidently organized system of transportation brought in local "gals" and an orchestra.  The Globe Trotter covered camp life in detail.  You can read most of the paper's run at the link down below.

A few photos of the camp have survived:

There's not much recent on the internet about Camp Globe.  One short article I read indicated that there was nothing left of the place.  Based on my exploration of other CCC camps I found that implausible.  So when I was in the area I stopped by.  Leaving my car on the Camp Globe Road I strolled a short distance down a small turn off road that was home to a few frogs and many mosquitoes.  And I found this:

A pair of big stone pylons.  One is tipping drunkenly towards the other.  Here's a better view of the upright one:

So, have I found the entry posts to Camp Globe?  If you use a little imagination and cover these in wood cladding the proportions look right.  And up on the top there are these big metal rods, just the thing to anchor down those fancy globes....

But even allowing for the partial collapse of the northernmost pillar, these are way closer together than the newspaper image would suggest.  And whatever road went through them is taking off at a 90 degree angle from the path I walked in on.

But I think I'm right in this ID.  Newspapermen and artists have always taken liberties, and its hard to see any other function for things that look like this.

Ghosts in the woods.

Here's the run of Globe Trotter newspapers.  The survival of so many CCC newspapers is likely because they were mailed to the Library of Congress.  Included in this set of images is an envelope that proves this.  

I'll probably go back for a visit in the fall to see what is still actually surviving.  CCC Camp Globe is logically on Camp Globe Road near the intersection with Horse Creek Lane.  It is about five miles north of Fairchild Wisconsin.  If you want more precise directions there is, and I did not know it at the time, a geocache on the site: Camp Globe.  I shall look it up next time I am there.  Probably it is near the "gate posts".

And HERE are a few more pictures of Camp Globe.