Life

Friends of Laurel Park gift covers repair of historic wall

Mark Morse, vice president of Friends of Laurel Park and past Laurel Park Civic Association president; Friends of Laurel Park President Mindy Collins and Laurel Park Mayor Carey O’Cain celebrate completion of repairs of the historic rock wall on Laurel Pa

By Bill Moss, Published: February 12, 2018

Mark Morse, vice president of Friends of Laurel Park and past Laurel Park Civic Association president; Friends of Laurel Park President Mindy Collins and Laurel Park Mayor Carey O’Cain celebrated the completed repair work on the historic rock wall along Laurel Park Highway.
The Friends of Laurel Park covered the $7,300 contract with Jeff Cosgrove’s Southwind Landscaping Co. to repair and rebuild the historic Civilian Conservation Corps wall from Hebron Road to Echo Mountain Inn.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” O’Cain said. “We haven’t repaired that wall for 80 years. They had been put back together after a car ran into them by the maintenance crew but the maintenance crew are not professional stone layers.”
Created at the start of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term in March 1933, the CCC formed “a peacetime army to battle against destruction and erosion of natural resources.” At its peak enrollment, the New Deal agency deployed 505,782 single young man ages 17 to 25 throughout the country, according to research by Laurel Park Town Councilman Paul Hansen. CCC workers received $30 a month, $25 of which was sent home to families. The workers planted 3 billion trees, built thousands of miles of fire roads, erected 3,470 fire towers and protected 20 million acres from erosion. In North Carolina, 70,000 young men enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, including 387 from Henderson County.
In this area, the agency had camps in Asheville, Black Mountain, Pisgah Forest, Brevard and Hendersonville. Besides the rock walls along Laurel Park Highway, CCC projects included picnic tables and outdoor fireplaces at Jump Off Rock.
“The Friends of Laurel Park support of the town’s effort to repair our CCC walls and memorialize them with historic markers assures that the trials, tribulations and efforts of the ‘Greatest Generation’ will not be lost to history books,” Hansen said.