Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton The 16th annual CCC Statue Dedication Reunion was held Friday at the Warren County Visitors Bureau.

What once was a reunion for veterans of the Civilian Conservation Corps has turned into a time to remember their contributions to our area.

The 16th annual CCC Statue Dedication Reunion was held Friday at the Warren County Visitors Bureau Organizer Ed Atwood noted that this year marks the 90th birthday of the CCC.

“We have a lot of things here that the boys did,” he said.

The CCC, which was active from 1933 to 1942, was a program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal intended to provide unskilled conservation related jobs to young men and help families struggling to find work in the Great Depression.

According to the Library of Congress, three million young men served in the CCC and “virtually changed the landscape of the United States through conservation projects on millions of acres of lands, and through the expansion and development of the nation’s state and national parks and forests.” The most visible vestiges of that work today include the three billion trees planted and 711 state parks created.

Many “CCC Boys” as they are known have attended the event throughout the years — Donald Come, Orren Wood, Charles Varro, Joe Tullio, John Dennis, Nick Stanko and Leo Beane.

Those numbers dwindled from year to year as those men — well into their 90s — passed away.

Six of those “Boys” are remembered with commemorative plaques and trees along the side of the WCVB building – Varro, Tulio, Dennis, Stanko, Beane and Edwin Zevotek.

Several family members of those men were in attendance Friday.

ANF-1 was the second CCC camp of about 4,500 in the nation. It was the first of 16 CCC camps on the Allegheny National Forest, and the first in Pennsylvania.

Located at Duhring in Forest County, Atwood said that some of the buildings remain, but are private property now.

“It was a real good camp,” he said. “It’s a nice place.”

Scott Rimpa, assistant District Forester for the Cornplanter State Forest, headquartered in North Warren, said that some famous CCC Boys included Stan Musial and Chuck Yeager and that half of the total would serve in the Armed Forces during World War II.

Rimpa said that the young men were paid $30 a week, $25 of which had to be sent home to their families.

The statue at the visitors center in Starbrick is one of seven in Pennsylvania. It was dedicated in 2007.

Warren County’s only camp – located at Bull Hill – was constructed in 1935 and opened in June of that year. Once the camp closed and the CCC shut down, the Bull Hill Camp was used as a POW camp where 200 German prisoners were guarded by 14 military policemen.