In 1929, one of ten erosion control research stations in the United States was set up southeast of this site for the purpose of studying erosion problems and the effectiveness of erosion control methods. This was one of the first organized efforts to solve the nation's soil erosion problems in a planned, scientific manner.

Five years later, in 1934, the Duck Creek watershed near this site was approved as a demonstrational project for working with all known methods of erosion control. In cooperation with the landowners in the 25,000-acre area, a plan of conservation treatment was devised for each farm. Much of the labor used in carrying out these plans, such as building dams and fences and planting trees and pasture grass, was provided by a nearby Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp.

The success of the Duck Creek project attracted much attention and many visitors to the area. Duck Creek was used by the Soil Conservation Service as a training ground for agronomists, soil surveyors, engineers, biologists, foresters, economists, and others who carried knowledge learned here to many other states across the country.

Named for a grove of black jack oak trees, Groveton resulted from the establishment of the Trinity County Lumber Company sawmill in 1882. After the Trinity and Sabine Railroad Company built a sixty-five mile branch line through area forests, the Trinity County Lumber Company bought about 29,000 acres of land from the Trinity and Sabine Timber Company, leaving acreage on either side of the railroad tracks for a town. The county seat was moved from Pennington to Groveton in 1882. By 1884 the first permanent court house was completed and the town included a barber shop, grocery store, drug store, hotel, boarding house, several saloons, homes, and a school. The city was incorporated on September 29, 1919 and officials were elected. By 1930 all the timber for miles around had been cut; consequently, the sawmill closed December 31, 1930. The once prosperous town of Groveton went into decline. The Civilian Conservation Corps was responsible for road construction and a reforestation program in the 1930s. Through the years Groveton has seen economic booms and hard times, but as the county seat, it and survived to leave a rich heritage.

Mississippi native and Goliad County Judge James Arthur White (1878-1953) possessed a fervent interest in Texas history, notably that of his adopted city of Goliad. He began in 1928 to organize support for a state park to protect Goliad's many significant historic sites. Judge White drafted a bill in 1931 to create the park and a state-funded bridge and highway (later U.S.183).

Despite the bleak financial prospects of the Depression era, Judge White secured funding and labor from the Federal Civil Works Administration in 1933. When funds were expended by 1934, White applied to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) program. Preliminary study of the site began in March 1935. Forty cottages, each to house six men, were constructed in May. The first CCC enrollees to arrive were veterans of the Spanish American War, the Boxer Rebellion in China and World war I. They had their own newspaper, "The Goliad Veteran," and their evening schedules included an extensive educational program. Historians and architects traveled the U.S. and Mexico researching Spanish colonial mission architecture. Supervised by National Park Service architects and local craftsmen, the CCC workers ultimately reconstructed a school-workshop, church and granary at Mission Espiritu Santo and also erected maintenance and shop buildings, a latrine, custodian's lodge, museum and administration building and developed a state park road and picnic facilities.

Judge White served on the Texas Centennial Commission, and through his influence Goliad received $100,000 in State and Federal funds for Memorial Auditorium (1937) and a burial monument for Col. J.W. Fannin and his men (1939). The CCC camp was closed by June 1941 due to the threat of World War II.

Longhorn Cavern opened as a State Park in 1932. From 1934 to 1942, Company 854 of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worked here to explore and develop the cavern. Using hand labor and native materials, the CCC workers built this structure in a style now known as National Park Service (NPS) Rustic. Completed by 1936, the one-story stone pavilion served as administrative offices for the park until 1967. An outside stairway leads to an observation terrace.

Created by President Franklin Roosevelt and approved by an Act of Congress in 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) provided youth employment programs during the Great Depression. The Lufkin CCC Camp, located near this site from 1933 until 1942, was administered by the Texas Forest Service. Young men helped to build roads and bridges, string telephone lines, and plant trees. The Lufkin CCC Camp proved to be instrumental in relieving unemployment but also helped revive the East Texas forest industry through its use of progressive forestry techniques.

In operation from 1908 to 1912, the Mewshaw State Sawmill at this site produced 35,000 board feet of lumber daily and was staffed by convict laborers form the nearby Rusk State Penitentiary. The village of Maydelle later developed on the rail line that ran between Rusk and Palestine, and in 1933 a forest conservation camp under the auspices of the Federal Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established here. The camp was closed in 1937, but the benefits of its programs are still evident in the I.D. Fairchild State Forest, now a wildlife sanctuary.

Among the first pioneers to settle the area that became North Cedar Community was Abner Womack, who arrived here with his family in 1856. Benjamin and Susan Burke and their children reportedly slept in tree houses for fear of animal attacks while slaves built their log house. The widowed Mary (Boon) Roach arrived with four of her sons in 1865. Another son, William, rejoined the family after serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. North Cedar Community soon became a small enclave of Confederate supporters. Many had left the ravaged southern states, particularly Mississippi, in search of new beginnings. Many in the area were destitute after the war, but the community continued to grow. In 1875 the nondenominational Williamson Cemetery Church was organized on the grounds of the existing Williamson Cemetery. Womack School, established in 1884, was first taught by Marion Jefferson "Jeff" roach. Though most residents continued to farm, Southern Pine Lumber Company provided jobs for many in North Cedar Community from 1900 to 1912. The Civilian Conservation Corps built and maintained roads, fire lanes and bridges during the Depression era, making the North Cedar Community more accessible in any weather. Few area farms were more than 100 acres, making them too small to bear the expense of modern agricultural machinery. The school was consolidated with Apple Springs Schools in 1939, and most young people moved to the cities to support the World War II homefront effort. Farms were consolidated into larger parcels more suited to cattle raising, and paper companies bought much of the former lumber lands. In the early 21st century, all that remained of North Cedar Community were a few scattered houses.

Established in 1925, Camp Wolters was named for Brigadier General Jacob F. Wolters, commander of the 56th Brigade for the National Guard, and designated a summer training site for horse-mounted cavalry units. The city of Mineral Wells donated fifty acres of land, and later thousands of acres were leased for the camp. By 1927 one thousand officers and men and the same number of horses were encamped here. In 1933 a Civilian Conservation Corps company set up camp at the National Guard barracks and made improvements at the camp and to the city park.

In 1940 Camp Wolters was selected as a major training base for the National Military Draft. During World War II, the camp became an important infantry replacement training center on 7,500 acres of leased land with a troop capacity that reached a peak of 24,973. The internationally famous "F" Troop of World War II was one of the mounted units that trained here. German prisoners of war also were housed at the camp.

After the war's end, the camp was deactivated by the army. The original Old Camp Wolters site was returned to the National Guard and used for local purposes until 1965.

J.H. Ratcliff's 1880s sawmill and village here gave way to major timber industry operations that by the early 1930s had decimated Houston County's densest virgin forest. As part of Federal efforts to restore the nation's natural resources, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp F-4-T was built at this site in 1933-34, and the Davy Crockett National Forest was established in this area in 1935. CCC workers constructed fire towers, built roads, developed an old sawmill pond into a public lake with recreational facilities, and planted about 3,000,000 trees. Ratcliff CCC Camp closed in 1941.

El Paso County's second poor farm, known as the El Paso Poor Farm, was established here in 1915. John O'Shea, a wealthy farmer and businessman whose farm was nearby, assumed operation of the farm. His wife, Agnes O'Shea, was in charge of the residents. John O'Shea died in 1929, and the couple's daughter, Helen O'Shea Keleher, came from her home in San Antonio to operate the farm with her mother. The farm was scheduled to be closed in 1929, but, with the troubled times of the Depression era, its population grew. Renamed "Rio Vista Farm," the poor farm hosted a variety of public welfare programs beginning in the 1930s. It operated under the Texas Transient Bureau and later the Federal Works Progress Administration. A temporary base for a Civilian Conservation Corps unit in 1936, the farm continued to shelter hundreds of homeless and destitute adults and children. From 1951 to 1964, the farm was used as a reception and processing center for the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican laborers to work in the lower valley of El Paso and other agricultural areas in the U.S. New Federal welfare programs and state law reduced the population of the poor farm to four, and it was closed in 1964. Unlike other Texas county poor farms, Rio Vista followed a familial rather than institutional model, accepting neglected and abandoned children in addition to the adult indigent population. In later life, Helen O'Shea Keleher cited the fifty years she spent with the more than four thousand orphans and neglected children of the Rio Vista Poor Farm as her proudest accomplishment.