Camp Remington was a product of the CCC, or Civilian Conservation Corps.  CCC was credited with renewing the nation's decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees from 1933 to 1942.  In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt aimed to end the unemployment and economic chaos that gripped the country.  Roosevelt planned a fight against soil erosion and declining timber resources by utilizing the unemployed citizens.

In what was called "The Hundred Days," President Roosevelt enacted the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act, more commonly known as the Civilian Conservation Corps. With this action, he brought together two wasted resources, the young men and the land, in an effort to save both.

This peacetime army totalled three million young men who engaged in a massive salvage operation, the most popular experiment of the New Deal.  Logistics was an immediate problem. The bulk of young unemployed youth was concentrated in the East, while most of the work projects were in the western parts of the country. The Army was the only agency with the slightest capability of merging the two and was in the program from the beginning. Together with Coast Guard, Marine Corps and Navy and mobilizing the nation's transportation system, it moved thousands of enrollees from induction centers to working camps.

Never before or since has there been an agency like the CCC. The program had great public support. Young men flocked to enroll. The CCC was largely responsible for a 55 percent reduction in crime by the young men of that day.  More than $72,000,000 in allotments was making life a little easier for the people at home. In communities close to the camps, local purchases, averaging about $5,000 monthly, staved off failure of many small businesses.

News from the camps was welcome and good. The enrollees were working hard, eating hearty and gaining weight, while they improved millions of acres of federal and state lands, and parks. New roads were built, telephone lines strung and the first of millions of trees that would be planted had gone into the soil.

The Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935 began the best years of its life. Behind it, for the most part, were early days of drafty tents, ill-fitting uniforms and haphazard work operations. Individual congressmen and senators were quick to realize the importance of the camps to their constituencies and political futures. Soon, letters, telegrams and messages flooded the Director's office most of them demanding the building of new camps in their states. Eventually there would be camps in all states and in Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. By the end of 1935, there were over 2,650 camps in operation in all states.

Some of the specific accomplishments of the Corps during its existence included 3,470 fire towers erected, 97,000 miles of fire roads built, 4,235,000 man-days devoted to fighting fires, and more than three billion trees planted. Five hundred camps were under the control of the Soil Conservation Service, performing erosion control. Erosion was ultimately arrested on more than twenty million acres. The CCC made outstanding contributions in the development of recreational facilities in national, state, county and metropolitan parks.

There were other related conservation activities including protection of range for the Grazing Service, protecting the natural habitats of wildlife, stream improvement, drainage, restocking of fish and building small dams for water conservation.

By late summer, 1941, the lack of applicants, desertion and the number of enrollees leaving for jobs had reduced the Corps to fewer than 200,000 men. There were also disturbing signs that public opinion had been slowly changing. Major newspapers that had long defended and supported the Corps were now questioning the necessity of retaining the CCC when unemployment had practically disappeared. Most agreed there was still work to be done, but they insisted defense came first.

Pearl Harbor had shaken the country to its very core, and it soon became obvious that, in a national dedicated to war, any federal project not directly associated with the war effort was in trouble. The joint committee of Congress authorized which programs, if any, were essential to the war effort. The CCC, no exception, came under review late in 1941. The findings of the committee was a surprise to no one. The major report recommended the Civilian Conservation Corps be abolished by July 1, 1942.

The CCC lived on for a few more months but the end was inevitable. Technically the Corps was never abolished. It was far simpler for Congress just to refuse it any additional money. The full Senate confirmed the action by voice vote and the Civilian Conservation Corps moved into the pages of history.

In an effort to utilize the remaining camps, the government allowed hunting and fishing clubs to charter the cabins as long as the rules were followed.  It is unclear from what is on the internet at what point this occurred.    

The following website states all of the camps in PA that were active at that time.  I don't know which is camp Remington.  If anyone can enlighten all of us, let us know!  In the very least, the list will spark some camp conversation!

http://www.cccalumni.org/states/pennsylvan1.html