Former York County CCC camp now on map
A recent York Daily Record story commemorating the former Civilian Conservative Corps camp in Glen Rock contained an intriguing sentence.
The story noted that a number of men married local girls while working at the Glen Rock area.
“Men with such surnames as VanMeter, Nicklow, Casper, Ballard, Clouser, McKnight, Fullerton and Quinn became a part of the local population,” the story stated. Those names stuck out in the heavily German area… .
In an earlier post, I puzzled over the Eastern European names in the York New Salem area. Since York County’s founding, families from different ethnic backgrounds have been drawn to the county for work opportunities. The CCC was another such opportunity.
Further, I’d always known that York County had CCC camps. Now I know where one was located. If you have information on the location of others, please comment.
Meanwhile, enjoy the YDR story on the Glen Rock camp:
William Hinton, 87, of York spent a year with the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Vincent Quinn, 89, of Glen Rock served three years with the CCC.
Both attended the dedication and unveiling of a historic marker honoring a CCC camp that was located in Glen Rock from 1935 to 1942.
It was 1939 when Hinton boarded a train for the trip from York to Glen Rock. It was during the Depression, his father was unemployed, and Hinton, just 19, and the eldest of seven children, saw the CCC as a way to help his family.
“I was paid $30 a month. I got $8, and they sent the rest home to my parents,” he said.
Quinn was only 17 when he left his family in Freeland, near Hazelton, to come to the camp.
The men built fences, roads and bridges, contoured farm fields to control runoff and erosion, planted trees and built trails and parks and water supply systems.
Fun and games came at the end of a long, hard day of work and on the weekends.
“There used to be a dance once a month. We had a little four- or five-piece orchestra, and they brought girls to the dance in a truck,” Hinton said.
Glen Rock had a bowling alley, a restaurant where they could get a banana split for a dime, and the bridge where they could sit and watch the girls walk by, Quinn said.
A number of the men, including Quinn, met and married local girls and made the area their home. “I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen,” Quinn said of his wife, Leona Walker Quinn.
Men with such surnames as VanMeter, Nicklow, Casper, Ballard, Clouser, McKnight, Fullerton and Quinn became a part of the local population.
Kerry McKnight of New Freedom recalled that his father, Sam, came from the flat, sandy part of South Carolina. When he arrived in Glen Rock with its hills and valleys, his reaction was, “‘I won’t last one week in this burg.’ He met the lady across the street and was here for 50 years.”
Sam Fullerton of Clearfield County was a technical adviser working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and teaching soil conservation. When the camp closed, Fullerton opened a USDA office in Glen Rock and he and his wife, Thelma, made the town their home.
His son, Mike Fullerton of York, said his older brother, John, remembers joining their father for Sunday dinner in the CCC camp’s dining hall.
William Hinton, left, and Vincent Quinn, former Civilian Conservation Corps workers in the late 1930s, mark the site of Glen Rock’s CCC camp. The site was dedicated recently on Glen Avenue. When it operated, its official name was Glenview Camp, Co. 2318, Camp SCS-7. Franklin D. Roosevelt established the CCC during the Depression to create jobs and protect natural resources, particularly to combat soil erosion.
