A Massachusetts teenager who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s spent part of his time in East Burke building the toll road up Burke Mountain, and another part being jolted across the state with a failing appendix.
Joseph H. Peterson arrived at the CCC camp in East Burke as a young man during the Depression. The corps, a New Deal program, put unemployed men to work on public lands. Peterson's son, Joseph H. Peterson Jr., shared his father's account at a Connecticut library talk in 2008.
The younger Peterson said his father worked on the road to the summit of Burke Mountain. The view from the notch included Lake Willoughby, another CCC project site.
Peterson's most vivid memory involved an emergency. While at the camp in winter, his appendix ruptured or was in danger of rupturing. The Army transported him by truck to Plattsburgh, New York, a three-hour drive across Vermont, for surgery at the nearest Army hospital. Peterson Jr. noted that hospitals were closer, but the Army required its own facility.
After the CCC, Peterson returned to Massachusetts, became a watchmaker, opened a shop, and ran it with his brother until his death in 1970.
The story is part of a larger account of the CCC's work in Darling State Forest. Marty Podskoch, author of "Vermont Civilian Conservation Corps Camps," compiled Peterson's recollections.
Originally reported by North Star Monthly.
Photo: Artaxerxes (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0). Photo is illustrative and not from the scene.
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