Pokagon State Park: The CCC's Indiana Masterwork

In nineteen twenty-five, citizens of Steuben County pooled money to buy five hundred eighty acres of lakeshore farmland and donated it to the state. The park was named for Leopold Pokagon, a Potawatomi chief who had led his band through the removal era by signing treaties and purchasing their own land in Michigan rather than moving west. It was an acknowledgment of the people who had lived here first.

In the nineteen thirties, Civilian Conservation Corps Company Five Fifty-Six moved in and transformed the park. They planted thousands of trees, built trails, a saddle barn, a bath house, and a toboggan run. The Potawatomi Inn, which opened in nineteen twenty-seven, was already standing. Pokagon now holds one of the largest concentrations of surviving CCC structures in Indiana, a Depression-era testament to what organized young men and federal dollars could build with their hands.