The hikers who have scaled Milton's Great Blue Hill are ready for their well-deserved rewards. Once they take a few more steps up Eliot Tower's winding staircase and gaze out, grimaces melt into smiles as the broad plain of Eastern Massachusetts unfurls, from the island jewels of Boston Harbor to the heights of Mount Wachusett. The resplendent vista has always been a welcome escape from the city, but these days it also offers a needed reprieve from the din of bankruptcies, layoffs, and foreclosures.
Hard times legacy
New Deal projects employed thousands back then, and remain as historical, and sometimes sentimental, landmarks
Unbeknownst to many of the hikers, however, the view from the rough-hewn stone lookout is a legacy from the last time economic news was so dire - the Great Depression. Eliot Tower and thousands of other New England landmarks were built in the 1930s with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. From hikers watching the sea crash along Acadia National Park's Ocean Path to families enjoying peanuts and Cracker Jack at a Pawtucket Red Sox game to skiers schussing down the Stowe Mountain slopes, New Englanders continue to enjoy the fruits of public works and conservation projects built decades ago by federal workers brandishing picks, shovels, and axes.
"You probably can't go more than 10 miles in any direction along the highways and byways of New England without finding examples of New Deal projects in existence today," says Joseph J. Plaud, board member of the National New Deal Preservation Association and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. "Even though 75 years have passed, many of the New Deal projects are still with us."
The recent passage of the massive federal stimulus package has stirred the historical echoes of such programs as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Works Progress Administration (WPA), and Public Works Administration (PWA) that provided jobs to millions. The young men of the CCC planted trees and constructed recreational facilities across New England, and in the Blue Hills Reservation these "Pine Cone Johnnies" built the Eliot Tower and picnic pavilions, roadways, and dozens of miles of trails.
The reservation's visitor center at Houghton's Pond features a small exhibit of CCC memorabilia, but a more robust collection can be found at the Richard Diehl Civilian Conservation Corps Museum at Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, N.H. The museum is housed in Bear Brook's historic corps camp, one of the few left in the country that remains mostly intact. The long, squat buildings lend the camp the aura of a military base, and for good reason. They served as barracks, latrines, and mess halls for the uniformed members of Roosevelt's "tree army."
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