Evidence of the CCC can still be seen throughout Mammoth Cave National Park. Many structures that were built by the CCC are still standing today. These include recently remodeled employee housing and other buildings in the park’s administration area.
The CCC stonework can be seen on the Three Springs pump house and chlorination house, around the park’s amphitheater, and along the banks of the Green River Ferry crossing where rocks were stacked to keep the banks from eroding.
Many of the trees that are seen today are from the CCC era. With much of the area being barren of trees when the park was created, the CCC took over 9,000 man hours to plant more than 1 million trees in what is now Mammoth Cave National Park.
The largest transformation that occurred was inside the cave itself. Many of the cave’s trails were single-file and made up of flat rocks stacked end to end. The CCC worked to improve and create what would be 24 miles of trail through the cave passageways. Another structure that you can still see today that the CCC constructed is the Frozen Niagara entrance and the rock landscaping around it.
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Speaking on the CCC’s efforts, Leech pointed out that ideally the CCC should have used a wider diversity of species in its development, using as an example that an area along Flint Ridge Rd. is nothing but Virginia Pine trees, which were coming into old age, as these trees usually live around 80 years.
Unfortunately for park staff, this meant that severe weather killed a majority of the trees, with those that were left being disposed of via a controlled burn. Leech pointed to this instance to reinforce the importance of biodiversity, stating, “It would’ve been nice if they had mixed it up a little bit instead of planting one species.”
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