San Antonio Hot Springs (with some other musings about American History)

On the last day of the Wheeler Peak trip we hiked a quick 10 miles to San Antonio Hot Springs on the SA River. It runs through the Santa Fe National Forest in Northern New Mexico. The springs start at about 126 degrees and cascade down a series of pools, each a little cooler than the one above. Here Jason is relaxing in the uppermost pool. These hot springs have been known for several hundred years but it was not until the 1930's that they became heavily used (though we had them to ourselves all morning). In the 1930's the CCC came in and capped the springs and provided a channel for them to flow down.

For those who are a little shaky on their 20th century American History here is a quick lesson. After World War I (the Great War) the country fell into an economic downswing. In October 1929 the stock market experienced a catastrophic fall (starting on Black Thursday and continuing through to the next Tuesday). Stocks would lose over 75% of their value in the next few weeks and months pushing a small economic slump into The Great Depression. The weeks immediately following the stock market crash caused great anxiety, fear and acute depression. People actually rented rooms on the upper floors of hotels in NYC for the sole purpose of jumping out the window to commit suicide (not that the hotel knew it at the time they rented the room). President Hoover was poorly prepared to fight the growing epidemic of unemployment and underemployment and was ousted in the election of 1932. FDR took office in the winter of 1933 and promptly began his fireside chats and his "First 100 Days". During this time he sent a number of bills to Congress that established what he called "the New Deal" with the American People. Among the alphabet soup of agencies that were created was the Civilian Conservation Corps or CCC. This was probably the most popular and popularized agency of the New Deal (right alongside the WPA which many argue, and probably rightly so, was more effective for both the individual and the nation but it is hard to dispute the idea of "popularity"). Basically the CCC enrolled young men, ages 17 to 25, to work in camps across the country on various conservation efforts. The camps were military style camps (run by Army reserve or local guard members in many cases) and employed the young men from 7:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon. In the evenings they could enroll in classes, attend religious functions or relax. (The most popular evening class was not auto repair or metalworking but cooking and baking) For their work they were paid $1 a day (of the $30 a month they recieved they were mandated to send $25 back to their families). They were fed generously and housed in tents and barracks. The projects they accomplished are myriad. In addition to the hot springs work they worked in over 4,000 different areas of the country repairing national parks, establishing hiking trails, planting trees, fixing and building dams, stopping soil erosion, clearing logging roads, and maybe, most importantly, establishing the first major wildfire-fighting system. This last project is the one that most endures todays as our national parks system has taken on that role. Once the Second World War began the CCC was essentially disbanded as those same young men were needed for the war effort. Some CCC camps remained and allowed a place for "conscientious objectors" to work on "projects of national importance" in lieu of military duty. More infamously, some of the CCC camps wre used as internment camps. If you want to know more about Hoover, FDR, the New Deal, either of the World Wars or anything else of importance in American History let me know and I can suggest more than few resources. Thoughts on the New Deal, government involvement in the poverty battle or our national natural resources? Comment below!