| Additional Information: | CONCRETE SILLS,CLAPBO ARD SIDED ENTRANCE ADDITION CLAPBOARD GABLES Map code is 87-1171-3.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt enthusiastically supported conservation during the Great Depression. Indeed, much of the New Deal’s acclaimed jobs program focused on conserving the nation’s natural resources. During the 1930s, Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to reforest lands, control forest fires, and develop campgrounds, roads, and trails in the forests and national parks. He created the Soil Conservation Service to combat erosion. He championed reclamation projects in major river valleys. And he spearheaded the creation of new national monuments, parks, and forests. Among the first forests designated under the New Deal was Nicolet National Forest, in 1933. The following year, the U.S. Forest Service acquired the land along the sparkling waters of Franklin Lake that became the Franklin Lake Campground.
The CCC, the Works Progress Administration, and the U.S. Forest Service developed the campground cooperatively. The Forest Service provided architects, landscape architects, and engineers to design the buildings and develop the landscape plan. CCC enrollees planted trees and shrubs, constructed roads and trails, and established campsites. And WPA workers constructed the buildings and structures in a rustic style that became the standard architecture for forests and parks. Designers blended buildings and structures with their surroundings by using indigenous natural materials, shingled roofs with broad overhangs, full-length porches, and overall simplicity.
The historic campground facilities nestle within a forest of maples, birches, pines, and hemlocks. They include a combination picnic shelter and bathhouse, a caretaker’s residence and garage, well houses, a reservoir building, a picnic shelter, several comfort stations, and a storage building. Most resemble log cabins, but several are built of locally gathered stone. The most impressive of these is the combination building (1936), adjacent to the boat ramp. The two-story structure is set into a hill providing ground-level access to the first and second floors. From the east elevation (away from the lake), the building looks one story tall, built of horizontal logs joined with saddle notches. An open middle section, marked by pairs of upright logs, suggests the passageways found in pioneer log cabins. On the west side of this passageway, an enclosed picnic area offers views of the lake through large unglazed openings Below that level, uncoursed fieldstone forms the walls of the “bath house” (actually restrooms), as well as the stout chimneys at each gable wall. Inside, these chimneys become fieldstone chimney-breasts. Notice, too, the fieldstone comfort stations (1936) scattered throughout the park. Log gable ends and deeply inset windows accentuate the thickness of their stone walls. |
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