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A common road-improvement project would begin at local farms where boulders were broken apart manually with sledge hammers and wedges to make gravel. The gravel was then hand-loaded and trucked for the needed rural roadside construction projects in the immediate area. Other CCC SCS Companies did the same elsewhere in West Virginia and throughout the Country. When new recruits would report to the CCC camp a common joke was to tell the "rookies" they would soon learn to operate "the sloping machine", which to, their surprise and the CCC veterans' amusement, was in reality nothing more than a mattock or other heavy hand tool used manually to dig and move soil to make soil benches and also reduce angles on hillside farmland. The CCC men had a good influence on the children who went to the Quiet Dell School, according to former student, Jim Turner. Jim, now in his 80's, used to sell Saturday and Sunday newspapers and magazines for a few cents each to those CCC Camp Harrison enrollees and cadre who stayed in camp on weekends back in the mid 1930's. In 1937, the camp was disbanded; all personnel were sent to other camps and the building either transported elsewhere or torn down. Although the buildings are long gone, one can still see the effects. One still sees the reduced slopes and soil benches on old farms, now grown up in woods. This is part of the lasting evidence once formed by muscle and by action of the CCC 'Sloping Machines' in Harrison County and elsewhere, wherever the CCC men helped to improve soil productivity on the farm. | |
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