Camp Lunden / Camp Lunden

Opened in June 1933, just three months after President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) would “put people to work,” Camp Lunden was one of 103 Michigan camps organized by mid-1935. The men were originally housed in tents; however, they soon built barracks, a mess hall, and other structures. The corps planted trees, built roads, fire lines, and trout ponds, and cleared the air field for the Atlanta airport. Many of the men socialized in Lewiston, boxed, and gave musical performances. Camp Lunden closed in 1936. In June 1933 two hundred unmarried, able-bodied men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, members of the Civilian Conservation Corps, set up camp on Hunt Creek. Soon after, they relocated to this site, which they named Camp Lunden. In 1936 forty men training to be draftsmen and civil engineers arrived. In their spare time they landscaped an earthen scale model of the state of Michigan in front of their barracks. The dug out lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and St. Clair—were fed by an artesian well and stocked with fish.