The first, biggest and most fondly remembered of the New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps which put young (18 to 24), unmarried, unemployed men to work outdoors in every state.

The young men, often under the tutelage of older, skilled and higher-paid workers, got $30 a month — with $25 sent home to their parents and $5 left over to spend at the local canteen.

From 1933 to 1942, New Mexico averaged 32 CCC camps, which paid more than $63 million to 54,500 workers, including 32,000 from New Mexico, many of them Hispanic. Native Americans worked separately on CCC projects on reservations. Blacks were segregated in their own camps, though none were in New Mexico.

In addition to building structures that continue to be used today, CCC camps educated young men, gave them marketable skills and introduced them to the larger world.

Self-described "Oklahoma farm boy" Carl Walker, now 94, said he had never used a flush toilet or a "fancy bathtub" until the night he stayed in a hotel in Tulsa, Okla., on his way to join a CCC camp working on Turner Falls State Park near Davis, Okla., in 1933, when he was 20. A county commissioner signed him up for the new federal program.

Walker's description of the CCC camp sounds like an Army experience. Inductees signed in and got a physical examination, vaccinations and supplies — bedding, toilet kit, canteen, mess kit and World War I uniforms. Newer, better quality and better fitting clothes arrived a few weeks later, recalled Walker, who volunteered for "KP" duty even though he didn't know that meant working in the kitchen.

"Handling those big pots and pans, sacks of potatoes, flour, etc. that were needed to prepare and serve meals to 200 hungry boys three times a day was strenuous," he wrote in a memoir to be published for his extended family and friends. "Fortunately, I had no trouble. ... I think we all gained some weight. I'm guessing that I weighed in at about 110 pounds, but later I'm sure I got to 125 without trying."

After six months of kitchen duty, Walker was asked by the camp's first sergeant to serve as an officers' orderly. "I told him I don't know anything about that. I'm a country boy," he said in an interview. "He gave me a little idea about it. ... and they paid me a little extra every month. ... In the wintertime, I built them a fire. I changed their linens. This was kind of housekeeping. I served their meals three times a day. I didn't cook for them. I just got their meals from the kitchen and served them. And I enjoyed doing it."

Several evenings a week, Walker took typing classes. It was a skill that would serve him well. After six months, he volunteered to plant trees with the rest of the crew so he could get more exercise, but the camp captain had a better idea.

"I want you to be supply sergeant," the captain told him. "It's the best job in camp." When the camp moved to New Waverly, Texas, Walker continued as supply sergeant, wearing sergeant stripes, sleeping in the supply room and now making $45 a month.

After another year of planting trees in the Piney Woods of east Texas, Walker was transferred to CCC camp SP-1N on the west side of Santa Fe, on the north side of what later became the Casa Solana neighborhood. The camp was located on land that would later be used during World War II as an internment camp for those of Japanese descent, later as a city dump and is now Ortiz Park, also known as the "dog park." Workers in the CCC camp initially worked on the new Hyde Memorial State Park and the Santa Fe River Park, while Walker continued as a supply sergeant.

"The routine was very much like we were accustomed to at the previous locations," he wrote in his memoir. "Of course we had to get acquainted with a number of names and faces. Those of us who were friends before became closer friends and found every opportunity to help each other." Walker attended Lutheran services in Santa Fe, conducted by a minister from Las Vegas, N.M., and also began going to a Baptist church with friends from Texas.

"The cute girls were a big attraction for a bunch of young adult males, including me," he wrote. "Meraldine (Mauldin) and her identical twin, Geraldine, were the ones who got my eyes, but Meraldine was the one who seemed to have eyes for me." Walker would walk Meraldine — then a junior in high school — to her home. Sometimes they would stop for a cherry cola at Capital Pharmacy. But her stepfather "didn't care much for CCC boys, so I didn't step in her home often," Walker wrote.

In December 1936, Walker was offered "the lowest grade civil service job that there was" — as a clerk-typist with the National Park Service. The agency's Santa Fe office, where he was based, was then at the federal courthouse, but the CCC was working on the National Park Service's new regional headquarters on Old Santa Fe Trail. Walker, who soon married Meraldine, eventually became associate regional director at the building, retiring in 1974. The Walkers now live at Ponce de Leon in Santa Fe.

"It was one of the best programs the government ever had because during the Depression, the Dust Bowl days and the drought, it put boys to work doing profitable work," he said. "All over the United States now, there are state parks, national parks, some city parks that CCC boys built, and they are permanent monuments to the boys."