The CCC Cabins

Fifteen stone cabins here were built by hand in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and they are still rented out by the night, which means anyone can sleep in one for the price of a motel room. Work began in 1933 under the regional director Herbert Maier, with the architect Arthur Fehr and the landscape architect Norfleet Giddings Bone, and the buildings are a textbook example of the rustic style the National Park Service developed for the programme: thick local stone, heavy timber, low horizontal lines, and a deliberate effort to make new construction look as though it had grown out of the hillside it sits on. The same stone went into the dams, the walls and the fences. The men who built them were paid thirty dollars a month, of which twenty five was sent directly home to their families. The park became a model for CCC work across the country and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997, one of only seven CCC parks in the nation to hold that status. The refectory, the swimming pool and the bath house near the entrance are all original to the period. Almost the whole park burned in the 2011 fire and the stone buildings came through it, which is a fair verdict on the construction. The road out of the far side, Park Road 1C, runs twelve winding miles through the pines to Buescher State Park and is one of the better short drives in Central Texas.