The Twilight Tour
The idea of portraying a CCC character was in the back of my head since last fall, hatching into a program I'm very proud of today. Part of the story I'm using comes from William S. Hightower's experience coming to Mesa Verde as a CCC boy in 1936. I'm eternally grateful to Rita Basdekas, the daughter of Mr. Hightower, for sharing her father's experiences at Mesa Verde with me.
Coordinating many stories into one story line, I am potraying my grandfather, George Judstra, as a CCC worker who came from South Dakota, to Englewood, CO, then joined up with the CCC and ended up at Mesa Verde National Park. Using oral histories and stories from Fred Blackburn's book on the CCC at Mesa Verde, I've created a composite character. The tour happens every Tuesday night at 7pm at Cliff Palace. Stop by the Far View Visitor Center bookstore and purchase the $10 ticket, which is a donation for the Mesa Verde Museum Association.
What follows is the story I've created for this tour.
"Folks, my name is George Judstra, and I come to talk with you about something real important. It’s somethin I care about a great amount. It’s the 3-C’s, the Civilian Conservation Corp. See, I was what you would call a CCC Boy, . I guess I still am, since it was such a important part of my life and for my family just 4 and 5 years back.
Looking back, November 8, 1936 – the day I arrived at Mesa Verde, everything was covered with snow, and it was still snowing. Growing up in South Dakota I always wanted to see the Rocky Mountains in the winter. I seen pictures of the mountains covered with snow. Always wanted to see it. And then I got my chance.
We moved to Colorado, my folks and me and my brother, to escape the dust in South Dakota. Was the worst thing I ever experienced. We had to cover our mouths, and the horses mouths and nose just to go somewheres. Grasshoppers and locusts would come in thunderous waves. The sound was so loud we covered our ears. Sounded like a really terrible thunderstorm all the time. Ever thing was so bad we hightailed it. We left.
We moved to Englewood, CO, to work for a farmer. We got the job because of my sister Gert and her husband. They was there already and wrote us to come. So we did. We was real lucky to get work. They paid us in food, a place to stay. Folk didn’t have much of nothin then. That’s when I decided to join up with the CCC. I’d been thinking it was a good deal, been thinking I should try it. Ma and Pa was enthused about it. It was sure a good deal for us all.
We loaded onto a train with 98 or 99 fellas, CCC boys coming to Mesa Verde. On the train trip we was coming through a herd of sheep, and one of the boys grabbed one of them and kept it for a long while, then he let it go. I felt real bad for the sheep being taken from its flock, from its mother. Sad. When we got to Mancos, Colorado, we was short one of the boys. Me and some boys joked that the sheep had taken one of ours since we took one of theirs. I guessed that somebody just got scared and snuck off at one of the stops.
Once I got here, all us men was showed around the cliff dwellings and the area a few days. It was the oddest thing to see. Here was all these stone houses, put into cliffs, totally silent. We all asked what had happened to the people. The Rangers we talked to said they never disappeared like was said. Said they was Anastazi, and that the people’s kin maybe live today in New Mexico and Arizona. Maybe. Not much is really known for sure. Don’t know how it could be. One group was called the Hopi. I always liked the sound of their name, on account of it sounding like Hope.
The Rangers said they think everybody just left. Think drought and famine maybe was the problem. Sounds familiar, don’t it. Almost Biblical. This type of thing’s been happening for as long as there been people and weather. Farmers can’t grow nothing, people going hungry. Dust storms, great clouds of locusts. They had it bad, maybe, like us.
It was strange being in a military style camp at first. But some things made it real good real quick. We got three good meals a day, a roof over our heads, clothing, education, and good hard work to do. It’s no wonder the 3-C’s is still going today. Not as strong as it used to be, so maybe that’s why I’m here, to try to recruit. If you know of any young boys who need a fresh start, the CCC would be a great way. Young men all across the land have done real good with it. I got 5 dollars a month and my Folks got 25 dollars a month. It was more money than we was used to havin, by a long shot.
The 3-C’s was a real good pogram for Mesa Verde, too. We did all kinds of things to help out. First when I got here, I was laying electric cables, then was in the kitchen doing KP. And of course you’ve all experienced the dangerous Knife Edge Road, since you’s here now. As you come in, the part when you is on the front edge of the mesa the is Knife’s Edge Road. You probrably remember it cause it’s like you is drivin on the sharp edge of a knife.
That road took up as much time and effort as most anything we did in the park. There was always some rock fall or snow to clear off it, or road falling away to fix. It was a lot of work. Man was it.
One night the Knife Edge Road cut us all. It claimed the life of the night watchman as he drove off the road and down the slope to his death. As I was one of the boys who helped retrieve his body, the boss at the time told me I was going to be the new night watchman. And that became my job for a while.
One time we was out on the road and a bunch of us boys was in the back of the truck. We saw this bobcat run across the road in front of us. Only, he made a mistake. He tried to go up the cut bank and it was all loose shale. He was spinnin his wheels like a cartoon character almost, and rock was flying out underneath him. He wasn’t getting nowheres too fast. Well one of the boys had a peashooter, slingshot. He shot that bobcat right in the rump, and that bobcat leaped up over the rest of the bank. I never will forget that.
We had a great time in the camp. Think of it – we had work, we had friends, we had food, a doctor to care for us and money too. The only thing we didn’t have was girls and our folks. But we made up for it. Boy, did we.
Some weekends we would stay in camp. They would show us park service movies sometimes. But other times we would go to dances in town on the weekends. We would load up the trucks and go to Mancos or Durango or Cortez or Dolores and just have a great time. Some guys would have dates, but there was always a bunch of stag girls there and the boys would dance with them. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I would go anyway, just to go to town. Sometimes we would go to movies, too.
There were plenty of times we couldn’t travel the roads over that winter. When that happened we often took some tin roofing lying around and go sliding down the edge in places where everybody should’ve got kilt, but didn’t. We had a lot of fun.
It was a great time, and hard time for us. But we were all in it together. Nobody was better off than anybody else – we was all poor or else we wouldn’t have been there. We was there for each other, too. We became a family. Some of the guys I worked with I still think of as friends.
I think about the people that was here that built Cliff Palace. They all left. It must have been a tough time for them, too. Build this whole palace and then just leave? I can imagine it, cause it seems kinda like what we did.
You never know what’s over that next hill in life. But no matter what, when us CCC boys left, we knew we was ready for the world, for the next crazy road or wild ride, that next hill, for whatever was to come. And we made it, together, by being family for each other."
Bibliography
Fred Blackburn, New Deal Days: The CCC Boys At Mesa Verde
Rita Basdekas, information on her father William S. Hightower
My parents for details on my grandfather’s life.
All the CCC boys from that great generation who contributed so much to our nation and Mesa Verde National Park
Coordinating many stories into one story line, I am potraying my grandfather, George Judstra, as a CCC worker who came from South Dakota, to Englewood, CO, then joined up with the CCC and ended up at Mesa Verde National Park. Using oral histories and stories from Fred Blackburn's book on the CCC at Mesa Verde, I've created a composite character. The tour happens every Tuesday night at 7pm at Cliff Palace. Stop by the Far View Visitor Center bookstore and purchase the $10 ticket, which is a donation for the Mesa Verde Museum Association.
What follows is the story I've created for this tour.
"Folks, my name is George Judstra, and I come to talk with you about something real important. It’s somethin I care about a great amount. It’s the 3-C’s, the Civilian Conservation Corp. See, I was what you would call a CCC Boy, . I guess I still am, since it was such a important part of my life and for my family just 4 and 5 years back.
Looking back, November 8, 1936 – the day I arrived at Mesa Verde, everything was covered with snow, and it was still snowing. Growing up in South Dakota I always wanted to see the Rocky Mountains in the winter. I seen pictures of the mountains covered with snow. Always wanted to see it. And then I got my chance.
We moved to Colorado, my folks and me and my brother, to escape the dust in South Dakota. Was the worst thing I ever experienced. We had to cover our mouths, and the horses mouths and nose just to go somewheres. Grasshoppers and locusts would come in thunderous waves. The sound was so loud we covered our ears. Sounded like a really terrible thunderstorm all the time. Ever thing was so bad we hightailed it. We left.
We moved to Englewood, CO, to work for a farmer. We got the job because of my sister Gert and her husband. They was there already and wrote us to come. So we did. We was real lucky to get work. They paid us in food, a place to stay. Folk didn’t have much of nothin then. That’s when I decided to join up with the CCC. I’d been thinking it was a good deal, been thinking I should try it. Ma and Pa was enthused about it. It was sure a good deal for us all.
We loaded onto a train with 98 or 99 fellas, CCC boys coming to Mesa Verde. On the train trip we was coming through a herd of sheep, and one of the boys grabbed one of them and kept it for a long while, then he let it go. I felt real bad for the sheep being taken from its flock, from its mother. Sad. When we got to Mancos, Colorado, we was short one of the boys. Me and some boys joked that the sheep had taken one of ours since we took one of theirs. I guessed that somebody just got scared and snuck off at one of the stops.
Once I got here, all us men was showed around the cliff dwellings and the area a few days. It was the oddest thing to see. Here was all these stone houses, put into cliffs, totally silent. We all asked what had happened to the people. The Rangers we talked to said they never disappeared like was said. Said they was Anastazi, and that the people’s kin maybe live today in New Mexico and Arizona. Maybe. Not much is really known for sure. Don’t know how it could be. One group was called the Hopi. I always liked the sound of their name, on account of it sounding like Hope.
The Rangers said they think everybody just left. Think drought and famine maybe was the problem. Sounds familiar, don’t it. Almost Biblical. This type of thing’s been happening for as long as there been people and weather. Farmers can’t grow nothing, people going hungry. Dust storms, great clouds of locusts. They had it bad, maybe, like us.
It was strange being in a military style camp at first. But some things made it real good real quick. We got three good meals a day, a roof over our heads, clothing, education, and good hard work to do. It’s no wonder the 3-C’s is still going today. Not as strong as it used to be, so maybe that’s why I’m here, to try to recruit. If you know of any young boys who need a fresh start, the CCC would be a great way. Young men all across the land have done real good with it. I got 5 dollars a month and my Folks got 25 dollars a month. It was more money than we was used to havin, by a long shot.
The 3-C’s was a real good pogram for Mesa Verde, too. We did all kinds of things to help out. First when I got here, I was laying electric cables, then was in the kitchen doing KP. And of course you’ve all experienced the dangerous Knife Edge Road, since you’s here now. As you come in, the part when you is on the front edge of the mesa the is Knife’s Edge Road. You probrably remember it cause it’s like you is drivin on the sharp edge of a knife.
That road took up as much time and effort as most anything we did in the park. There was always some rock fall or snow to clear off it, or road falling away to fix. It was a lot of work. Man was it.
One night the Knife Edge Road cut us all. It claimed the life of the night watchman as he drove off the road and down the slope to his death. As I was one of the boys who helped retrieve his body, the boss at the time told me I was going to be the new night watchman. And that became my job for a while.
One time we was out on the road and a bunch of us boys was in the back of the truck. We saw this bobcat run across the road in front of us. Only, he made a mistake. He tried to go up the cut bank and it was all loose shale. He was spinnin his wheels like a cartoon character almost, and rock was flying out underneath him. He wasn’t getting nowheres too fast. Well one of the boys had a peashooter, slingshot. He shot that bobcat right in the rump, and that bobcat leaped up over the rest of the bank. I never will forget that.
We had a great time in the camp. Think of it – we had work, we had friends, we had food, a doctor to care for us and money too. The only thing we didn’t have was girls and our folks. But we made up for it. Boy, did we.
Some weekends we would stay in camp. They would show us park service movies sometimes. But other times we would go to dances in town on the weekends. We would load up the trucks and go to Mancos or Durango or Cortez or Dolores and just have a great time. Some guys would have dates, but there was always a bunch of stag girls there and the boys would dance with them. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I would go anyway, just to go to town. Sometimes we would go to movies, too.
There were plenty of times we couldn’t travel the roads over that winter. When that happened we often took some tin roofing lying around and go sliding down the edge in places where everybody should’ve got kilt, but didn’t. We had a lot of fun.
It was a great time, and hard time for us. But we were all in it together. Nobody was better off than anybody else – we was all poor or else we wouldn’t have been there. We was there for each other, too. We became a family. Some of the guys I worked with I still think of as friends.
I think about the people that was here that built Cliff Palace. They all left. It must have been a tough time for them, too. Build this whole palace and then just leave? I can imagine it, cause it seems kinda like what we did.
You never know what’s over that next hill in life. But no matter what, when us CCC boys left, we knew we was ready for the world, for the next crazy road or wild ride, that next hill, for whatever was to come. And we made it, together, by being family for each other."
Bibliography
Fred Blackburn, New Deal Days: The CCC Boys At Mesa Verde
Rita Basdekas, information on her father William S. Hightower
My parents for details on my grandfather’s life.
All the CCC boys from that great generation who contributed so much to our nation and Mesa Verde National Park
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