Civilian Conservation Corps Museum, Highlands Hammock State Park

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

This small museum offers artifacts and exhibits that share the history of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the crews who built the trails, roads, and buildings of Highlands Hammock State Park. One of the first state parks in Florida, Highlands Hammock State Park is 9,000 acres in size and features an old-growth hammock, cypress swamps, pinelands, campgrounds, and horseback, hiking, and biking trails. The park also offers tram tours. Using donated funds from conservationist Margaret Shippen Roebling, a group of local residents bought the land to create the park in 1931. Four years, later, the state parks system was established and Highlands Hammock State Park was among the first in the new system. This museum shares the story of how the CCC constructed developed the park, including separate (and unfinished) botanical gardens that eventually merged with the park.

Images

Highlands Hammock State Park opened in 1931 and became one of Florida's first state parks in 1935. This building is home to the CCC museum.

The park features a number of trails with boardwalks.

Plant, Canopy walkway, Tree, Natural landscape

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

As farmland kept encroaching closer to the hammock by the late 1920s, locals worried that it would be lost forever. As a result, they formed a group to raise money to buy the land to create a public park. Margaret Shippen Roebling, who was the daughter-in-law of Washington A. Roebling, the civil engineer who oversaw the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, donated a total of $50,000 for the effort. The group, which raised funds as well, hoped the park would become a national park but it was considered too small. Unfortunately, Roebling passed away before the park opened but her family continued to support the project.

The CCC was a jobs program the federal government created to put young men to work in conservation-related projects during the Great Depression. For Highlands Hammock, the local CCC crew built the roads, trails, and structures in the park. The park opened in March 1931 and was initially 1,280 acres in size. In 1934, the local CCC group started to build the botanical garden but it was never completed. The work stopped at the onset of World War II and the park and gardens merged in 1939.

Highlands Hammock is also significant for being where the first female field employee of the Florida Park Service, Carol Beck, worked between 1949 and 1965. A botanist and naturalist by training, she eventually became the first chief naturalist of the park system. She also started the tram tours. The park, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018, laid the foundation for future park design and management in the state

Sources

"History of Highlands Hammock." Florida State Parks. Accessed April 1, 2021. https://www.floridastateparks.org/learn/history-highlands-hammock.

"Secretary Detzner Announces the Designation of Highlands Hammock State Park on the National Register of Historic Places." Florida Department of State. Thursday, December 8, 2018. https://dos.myflorida.com/communications/press-releases/2018/secretary-detzner-announces-the-designation-of-highlands-hammock-state-park-on-the-national-register-of-historic-places.

Image Sources(Click to expand)

Both images via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Highlands_Hammock_State_Park-