Valentine’s Day Alternative: The Boys of Bergen

If you don’t have a sweetheart to celebrate Valentine’s Day with this year, don’t worry. The Mahwah Museum has an alternative event this Thursday that can get you better acquainted with the Civilian Conservation Corps – a group of young, unmarried men who worked in the first Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal work program in the 1930's.

The museum posted a description of the “Boys of Bergen” lecture, happening at 7:30 p.m. this Thursday, Feb. 14, at the Ramapo Reformed Church:

Kathleen Duxbury will present “The Boys of Bergen – Remembering the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Bergen County, NJ” for the Mahwah Museum Lecture Series.  The lecture will be held in the Ramapo Reformed Church Educational Building, 100 Island Rd, Mahwah.   

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was created by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression as the first and most successful of his New Deal work programs.  While providing jobs for many young, unmarried men, the program dealt with the conservation and development of natural resources and helped the nation face the high unemployment rates caused by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. 

Between 1933 - 1941 the CCC boys toiled along the cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades and in the marshes of the Hackensack Valley. They worked, played and grew up to become self-confident young men with a newfound respect for conservation and America.  The CCC is now recognized as the greatest conservation movement in United States history.  

The presenter, Kathleen Duxbury, is an author, photographer and New Deal researcher.

Admission is $3 per person. Get more information on the event and make reservations on the Mahwah Museum website.

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