DCR Starts Franklin State Forest Signage Project

Above, the cistern in the Franklin State Forest (DCR image).

The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) held a virtual team kickoff meeting yesterday to discuss available resources and tasks that need to be accomplished in order to add interpretive signage in the Franklin State Forest, The signage is intended to focus on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps camp once located there.

According to DCR,  CCC Camp S-90 was established in 1935, the same year the State began acquiring land for Franklin State Forest. Camp S-90 was accessed from Grove Street.

The camp once contained multiple buildings that housed men whose job was to improve the nation’s publicly owned forests and parks -- in the case of the Franklin State Forest that meant planting lots of trees.

The camp shut down in 1937. Some of the lumber was reportedly used in the construction of the Franklin Rod & Gun Club.  One of the few remaining structures from the camp is a concrete cistern that was part of the camp water supply.

DCR hopes to explain this history and provide some illustrations to help visitors understand the cistern and the nearby concrete footings that once supported a barracks and a small town-within-a-town at the forest.