Millersylvania State Park
Near Olympia, Washington
The state park off to your east began as a gift. The Miller family bequeathed this forested land along Deep Lake to Washington in nineteen twenty-one, along with forty-six hundred dollars in bonds for its upkeep. For years the land sat largely undeveloped, until Franklin Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps arrived in nineteen thirty-three and built the park by hand, constructing roads, trails, picnic shelters, and bathhouses that still stand today.
The National Park Service added Millersylvania to the National Register of Historic Places in two thousand nine, recognizing the nearly intact CCC infrastructure. A less-told chapter: in nineteen thirty-four, fifty-one Black CCC enrollees were assigned here but barred from construction work and confined to kitchen duties, while a separate swimming area at Deep Lake was ordered to keep them apart from other visitors.
