Chapter 3 

 

Catoctin and Prince William Parks Join the War Effort 

The decision of Donovan’s organization to establish its first U.S. training camps 

at Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland, and Prince William Forest Park, Virginia, had been 

based on their’ rural, isolated location yet comparative proximity to the nation’s capital. 

Each site should occupy several hundred acres, be located away from highways and be 

“preferably far distant from other human habitations,” Major Garland H. Williams, 

deputy chief of Special Operations, put it.1

 Given the need for speed, secrecy and 

isolation, these particular sites were obtained in March 1942 because they were readily 

available and met the OSS criteria at that time.2 It was particularly helpful that the two 

sites were already federal property and that they combined rugged, wooded terrain with 

existing camping, administrative, and maintenance facilities. Those favorable 

circumstances were, of course, the result of their being part of the U.S. National Park 

Service. 

Origins of Catoctin and Prince William Parks 

 Both parks had been developed in the 1930s by the National Park Service as part 

of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program in response to the Great 

Depression. They were part of a federal project for converting land that had become submarginal in agricultural production and was accessible from metropolitan areas into parks 

and recreational facilities. Under the leadership of Secretary of the Interior Harold L. 

Ickes, the federal government in the mid-1930s began acquiring land for what were called 

Recreational Demonstration Areas (RDAs). The original intention was for the federal 

government to establish the RDAs and subsequently to relinquish them to the states. Most 

were deeded back as state parks, but a few—Prince William and Catoctin among them—

would remain permanently within the national park system.3 Early on, leadership in the 

 

1

 Maj. Garland H. Williams, “Training,” memorandum, n.d. [January or February 1942], p. 6; located in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 161, Folder 1754, National Archives II, College Park, Md., 

hereinafter, National Archives II. 

2

 Lt. Col. H[enson]. L. Robinson to Col. Atherton Richards, OSS Planning Group, subject: Schools and 

Training Report [a 14-page, historical and geographical overview of the entire OSS training program],” 30 

October 1943, p.1, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 162, Folder 1757, National Archives II. 

3

 Conrad L. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 187,

189; see also a contemporary report on the program, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park 
86 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

RDA program was assumed by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), a permanent 

government agency created in 1916, to preserve and oversee the federal parks.4 

 Enthusiastically Conrad L. (“Connie”) Wirth, assistant director of the National 

Park Service, championed recreational development in the parks.5

 He led the National 

Park Service’s dramatic expansion into development-oriented, recreational programs in 

the parks to provide healthy, outdoor, recreational facilities for urban dwellers. NPS 

studies identified a special need for such facilities by social organizations for urban 

youths. 

 The National Park Service sought sites within about 50 miles from an urban 

center, with at least 5,000 acres, and with good water, available building materials, and 

an interesting environment. The plan was to construct picnic areas, family campgrounds, 

and an organized camping area. The latter would contain three to six group camps, each 

of which would contain a general dining hall, an office, and an infirmary. Each group 

camp would have three to four sub-units, each with a lodge and half a dozen four-bed 

cabins plus a cabin for the group leader. Thus each camp was designed for 70 to 100 

campers and a group staff of 20 to 30 persons. In general, the camp buildings were to be 

rustic style constructed of lumber or unpeeled logs on a stone foundation, with these 

materials obtained from the site.6

 As Wirth recalled forty years later, “We proposed to 

build campsites primarily for group camping but also to provide year-round camping and 

recreation for individuals, small groups, and families. Our general objective was to 

 

Service, “Emergency Conservation Work under National Park Supervision on State and County Parks, 

Metropolitan Sections of Municipal Parks and Resettlement Recreational Demonstration Projects,” n.d. [c. 

1937], in National Park Service Records (hereinafter NPS Records) (RG 79), Entry 54, Box 20, Folder 

“Virginia, R.S. 0-207, Reports,” National Archives II. 

4

 On the origins of the U.S. National Park Service within the Department of the Interior, see Harland D. 

Unrau and G. Frank Williams, Administrative History: Expansion of the National Park Service in the 1930s 

(Denver, Colo.: NPS Denver Service Center Publication, 1983); Ronald A. Foresta, America’s National 

Parks and Their Keepers (Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, Inc., 1984); Horace M. Albright as 

told to Robert Cahn, The Birth of the National Park Service: The Founding Years, 1913-33 (Salt Lake City, 

Utah: Howe Bros., 1985); Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (New 

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997); U.S. National Park Service, The National Parks: Shaping the 

System, 3rd ed., rev. by Janet McDonnell (Washington, D.C. Govt. Printing Office, 2005). 

5

 Conrad Wirth was a landscape architect who worked with the National Capital Park and Planning 

Commission before he joined NPS in 1931. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 139-140. In 

1934, Arno B. Cammerer, NPS Director, 1933-1940, established an NPS team to make a preliminary 

survey of recreational needs of the nation and their applicability to national, state, and local parks. Its 

members included George Wright, head of the Wildlife Division, Conrad Wirth, head of the Recreation, 

Land Planning and State Cooperation Division, and John Coffman, chief forester of the National Park 

Service. Coffman is a distant relative of the present author. 

6

 Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People , 188-89. The estimated construction cost of $75,000 to $100,000 

for each camp was in addition to the cost of acquiring the land, which NPS hoped to purchase for $5 an

acre but which was later extended to an average of $10 per acre. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 87

provide quality outdoor recreation facilities at the lowest possible cost for the benefit of 

people of lower and middle incomes.”7

In 1936 President Roosevelt signed an executive order giving the National Park 

Service control over the entire Recreational Demonstration Area program. Eventually it 

would establish 46 RDAs in 24 states. Drawing on financial and labor support from such 

temporary New Deal agencies as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civilian 

Conservation Corps (CCC) and others, the National Park Service’s large-scale movement 

into outdoor recreational development contributed in no small part to the dramatic growth 

of the NPS from managing primarily a limited number of large national parks of the West 

to responsibility for dozens of parks across the country.8 

Acquiring Land and Building Cabin Camps at Prince William Forest Park 

Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area (later renamed Prince William 

Forest Park) with 14,000 acres in Virginia and Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area 

(later Catoctin Mountain Park), with nearly 10,000 acres in Maryland were two of the 

seven largest of the RDAs.9 They were also among the first selected by the National Park 

Service. Because of Chopawamsic’s proximity to Washington only an hour away, and 

accessibility to top government officials and the national press corps, Wirth wanted to 

make it a model experiment. He believed that its success or failure would affect the entire 

RDA program.10

 The sprawling wooded area west of Quantico, Virginia, seemed perfect for the 

RDA program. It was only 35 miles from Washington D.C. which badly needed 

additional camping facilities for urban youth. The land was economically unproductive, 

the soil having been depleted by farming and mining practices. The area was sparsely 

populated, and residents suffered high unemployment, more than half of the 150 resident 

families were on relief and only 40 families had any regular income. The forest itself was 

attractive, with second growth trees, abundant wildlife, three lakes, 18 miles of fresh 

water streams—Chopawamsic Creek and Quantico Creek—and timber and stone for 

 

7

 Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 186. Wirth later served as NPS director, 1951-1963, initiating 

Mission 66, a large scale, long term project targeted at 1956-1966 for restoring and developing the national 

parks for post-war America. 

8

 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 140-142. NPS’s emphasis on recreational expansion and 

management in the parks did generate criticism among some of it NPS’s longtime supporters such as the 

Save the Redwoods League, the Wilderness Society and the National Parks Association, ibid., 142-145. 

Another area of expanded NPS responsibility in the 1930s was historic site management. 

9

 See the listing in Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 187. 

10 Conrad L. Wirth to Arthur E. Demaray, associate director of NPS, 22 April 1935, NPS Records (RG 79), 

Box 124, National Archives II. 
88 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

constructing access roads and park facilities for the organized group camping that the 

youth and charitable organizations of Washington needed.11

 Land acquisition, or more accurately obtaining options to purchase land, began 

early in 1935.12 Many of the several hundred residents, whites and blacks, did not want to 

leave, some of the families having lived there for generations. Few had electricity, 

telephones, or indoor plumbing, but most of the people did not consider themselves poor, 

as they existed on subsistence farming, barter, or occasional work, often at the U.S. 

Marine Corps base at nearby Quantico, the Army Corps of Engineers Post at Fort Belvoir 

or the Navy Yard in Washington. Illicit bootleg whisky stills operated in the backwoods. 

Many of the rural residents did not see why they should be forced to leave in order for 

group camping facilities to be created for the urban youth from Washington. Yet, they 

felt helpless against the power of the federal government, as even those property owners 

who took their case to the courts ultimately had to sell their land. While the Resettlement 

Administration acquired the land, the NPS project managers helped relocate 40 of the 

poorest families and connect them with relief and retraining agencies. But after leaving 

their homes, many of the residents simply moved to just beyond the boundaries of the 

park, where many of their descendants continue to live to the present day.13

 

 In contrast, the Washington Council of Social Agencies was overjoyed, calling 

the National Park Service “our fairy godfather” because it was not only providing the 

park but was incorporating the suggestions of the council and its social agencies for the 

kinds of wholesome outdoor facilities they wanted.14 NPS made plans for Chopawamsic 

RDA as a model, character-building camp. The idea was to take underprivileged youth, 

who had been forced to live in the “artificial living conditions” in the “sprawling, 

overcrowded cities” and through organized camping help produce a “human crop” of 

“sturdy citizens.”15 

 

11 “Chopawamic, Va., ‘At the Small Lodge,’ Preliminary Report,” 28 January 1935, pp. 10-12; Arno B. 

Cammerer to C. Marshall Finnan, Supt., National Capital Parks, 2 February 1935; see also photographs and 

commentary in reports entitled “Observations and Photographs on Chopawamsic Creek, December 17, 20, 

and on Quantico Creek, December 18, 24, 26, and 27, 1934; all in NPS Records (RG 79), E-47, Box 124, 

Folder 501, National Archives II. 

12 Because of the multiple federal entities involved in the RDA project, it was actually the Resettlement 

Administration that acquired the land; NPS selected the site and would plan the facilities. Charles Gerner 

was the project manager and William R. Hall, assistant project manager from NPS for the Resettlement 

Administration. Hall acquired options to buy 12,400 acres, appraised at $181,000, for $139,000. Susan 

Cary Strickland, Prince William Forest Park: An Administrative History (Washington, D.C.: National Park 

Service, 1986), 9-10, 14-15; see also “Land Acquisition, Chopawamsic, Virginia, “Old Resettlement 

Administration File,” closed 31 December 1937, NPS Records (RG 79), E-47, Box 126, Folder 630, 

National Archives II. 

13 Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 11-13. 

14 Mary Edith Coulson, secretary of the Washington Council of Social Agencies, to William R. Hall, 13 

July 1936, NPS Records (RG 79), RDA Files, Entry 47, Box 121, National Archives II. 

15 The quotations are from the film, Human Crop (U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1936), copy in Prince William 

Forest Park Nature Center; see also Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 15-16, 19. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 89

 Construction began in 1935, and was performed, under overall NPS supervision, 

primarily by jobless local workers and some artisans hired by the Works Progress 

Administration (WPA) and the 18 to 25-year-old unemployed urban youths in the 

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).16 The CCC units of about 200 young men each, 

working under quasi-military regimen, built or brought their own portable, wood and 

tarpaper work camps, then joined with WPA men to construct the access roads and the 

first two cabin camps, using mainly local materials and working with their own portable 

sawmill and a rock crushing gravel maker.17 Despite working through 1935 and early 

1936, the CCC and WPA crews were not able to complete the two cabin camps when 

they were officially opened in June 1936.18 

By 1939, the CCC and other work crews had essentially completed the five cabin 

camps at Chopawamsic RDA. Instead of turning it over to the state of Virginia, however, 

it was decision to retain it as a permanent part of the National Park System and make it 

part of the National Capital Parks. The reason given was its value as “an ideal 

recreational and camping area needed to organized camping facilities for various social 

service agencies and other organizations” in the Washington area.19

Since Chopawamsic RDA (Prince William Forest Park) was virtually complete 

and because it would remain within the National Park Service, the NPS, in late 1939, sent 

a new manager to take over the facility from the project managers who had overseen its 

acquisition by the Resettlement Administration and its construction by the CCC and 

WPA. The new manager, Ira B. Lykes, would manage Chopawamsic RDA for the next 

dozen years, from 1939 to 1951. Lykes was originally from Trenton, New Jersey, and 

after graduating from high school there, he had worked in engineering and construction 

companies in the state capital, while taking some night courses in business administration 

at nearby Rider College. Subsequently, after five years researching titles and purchasing 

 

16 Reported in “14,000-Acre Park Approved by House,” Washington Post, 6 August 1940, clipping in NPS 

Records (RG 79), E-47, Box 124, Folder 501,National Archives II. On the CCC, see John A. Salmond, The 

Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942: A New Deal Case Study (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 

1967); see also John C. Paige, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service, 1933-1942: 

An Administrative History (National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 1985). On the WPA, see 

Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation Back to Work

(New York: Bantam, 2008). 

17 The three original CCC work camps (SP-22 near the current park headquarters; SP-26, near Camp 2, site

of the Old Randal home off Route 626; and SP-26, near Camp 3) were abandoned in 1938-39. SP-26, near 

Camp 3, was re-established in March 1938. Two additional CCC camps were built in 1941 and which 

operated from June 1941 through February 1943. Their mission was primarily defense-related construction 

work at military facilities in the area, such as Fort Belvoir, the Corps of Engineers’ main training facility. 

These two new CCC camps were designated NP-D-5 and NP-D-16, near Camp 3. John Gum was the 

superintendent for NPS of these two CCC camps, which came under the War Department. See the listings 

in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 17, 24. Most of the buildings in these CCC camps were 

demolished in 1959-1960. 

18 Progress Report, 1 July 1936, NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 54, Box 121, and W.R. Hall, project 

manager, “Report on the First Open House Held at Chopawamsic on Wednesday, August 16, 1939,” NPS 

Records (RG 79), E-47, Box 124, Folder 501, National Archives II. 

19 Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 1986), 7. Public Law 763, Chapter 663, 76th Cong., 3rd Sess., 

approved 13 August 1940. 
90 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

land for the State Highway Commission, he joined the National Park Service in1933 as a 

foreman in charge of general park development at Voorhees State Park in High Bridge, 

New Jersey. The next year, he was called to the NPS regional office in Richmond, 

Virginia, and over the next several years, he had various assignments with the National 

Park Service in the southeastern states.20 In December 1939, now that Chopawamsic 

Recreational Demonstration Area was ready for full operation, he was sent there as its 

manager to run the park.21 At 33, Lykes was still slender and of medium height and he 

looked trim and fit in his NPS ranger’s uniform and broad-brimmed hat.22 Three decades 

later, he recalled the appointment. “I said, yes I would [accept the position]. I wanted 

some more field experience. So I went up there ...and established myself, living in a 

CCC barracks and commuting back to Richmond until the [manager’s] residence was 

finished in 1940.”23

Lykes took over an operating park. Some of the CCC units were still working, but 

most of the organized group cabin camps had been completed. The cabin camps were 

numbered in the order in which they were built. They were segregated by race. Racial 

segregation remained a fixture in southern society until the mid-20th century, and the NPS 

at that time deferred to “local custom” in the racially segregated camps.24 Camps 1 and 4 

in the northeastern part of the park were then known as the “Negro camps.” They were 

maintained by organizations for underprivileged African-American youths from 

Washington, D.C. Camp 1 (originally known as Camp Lickman, later Goodwill) was for 

boys from what was then called the “Negro YMCA.” Camp 4 (Pleasant) was originally 

designated for African-American mothers with children up to age three, but it was used 

only one year for that purpose and then became the camp for black girls and young 

 

20 Beginning in 1934, Lykes was assigned to the NPS office in Atlanta, Georgia, where he worked in 

various capacities on Recreational Demonstration Area projects in a number of southeastern states, 

returning to Richmond in 1937 to handle special services, including publication of the Regional Review. In 

1939, he was at various times in charge of all Virginia Wayside development, Superintendent of North 

Carolina Beach Erosion Control Project (later Cape Hatteras National Seashore), Superintendent of Kings 

Mountain National Military Park, South Carolina, and NPS Assistant State Inspector for FloridaIra B. 

Lykes’ biographical information obtained from various documents, including Temporary Appointment, 

Transfer, Reinstatement, or Promotion Form for US Civil Service Commission, 17 July 1941; Loyal Data 

Form, 17 November 1947; “Profiles: Ira B. Lykes,” unidentified clipping; all in Ira B. Lykes, Personnel 

File, National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Mo.,

obtained by the author, 26 April 2007. 

21 Mrs. J. Atwood Maulding, Director of Personnel, Department of the Interior, to Ira B. Lykes, 24 August 

1940 in Ira B. Lykes, Personnel File, National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel

Records Center, St. Louis, Mo. 

22 Physical description of Ira B. Lykes in early 1940s provided by the widow of Capt. Arden Dow, chief 

instructor at OSS Training Area A-4 in Chopwamsic RDA, Mrs. Dorothea (“Dodie”) D. Dow, Athens, 

Georgia, telephone interview with the author, 16 June 2005. 

23 Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview, 23 November 1973, by S. Herbert Evison, pp. 30-31, tape number 

261. I am indebted to David Nathanson, NPS, Harpers Ferry Center, Harpers Ferry, W.Va., with 

responding on 1 November 2005, to my request for a transcript of the Lykes’ oral history interview. 

24 “The Effects of Segregation on Park Management,” chapter three in Strickland, Prince William Forest 

Park, 39-49. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 91

women. The other three camps were maintained by organizations for white youths. In the 

southwestern quadrant of the park, Camp 2 (Mawavi) in the western quadrant was 

ultimately maintained by the white Girl Scouts of Arlington, Virginia. Camp 3 (Orenda) 

in the southeastern quadrant, near the park headquarters, was to be maintained by the 

Family Service Association for White Children, for white mothers and their children to 

age three, but this lasted only one year; thereafter, Camp 3, which held 120 campers plus 

staff that brought it to a total of 160 persons, was used by a variety of white groups.25

Camp 5 (Happy Land), on the west side, close to Camp 2 (Mawavi) had not been finished 

when Lykes took over at the end of 1939, but it was completed the next year. Originally, 

Camp 5 was the smallest of the five camps, accommodating 96, but later it was expanded 

to hold 120 persons. It was maintained and operated by the Salvation Army.26 The 

abandoned CCC camp with its barracks rather than cabins was not designed for organized 

camping, but it could be used for group purposes. There were separate entrances to the 

white and black camping facilities. The black camps were entered from the Dumfries 

Road (Route 234) on the north side of the park. The white camps were entered from the 

old Joplin Road (old Route 629; today Route 619). Although NPS planned for a main 

entrance that would connect both white and black camping areas, lack of funding for land 

acquisition and construction delayed the establishment of a single main entrance and 

interior connecting roads until 1951.27

Although by 1940, the five cabin camps were essentially complete, a system of 

roads and bridges needed to be built along with a main entrance. In addition, day-use 

facilities had not been constructed. Unfortunately, the Depression emergency funds and 

agencies were being shut down, and beginning in 1940, the federal funding focus shifted 

to a defense buildup. Lykes had to work creatively for funding to get work done that was 

not related to defense needs. Throughout the twelve years that Lykes ran the park, he 

demonstrated great energy and imagination and proved to be an effective manager in 

particularly difficult times. 

Like other park superintendents, Lykes was dedicated to the park and a 

combination of preservation and development. Public support is crucial for National Park 

Service, which, despite being a government bureaucracy, has high public approval ratings 

due to its role in preserving parks, monuments, and historic sites for the American 

 

25 For itemization of the racial identification and the uses of the five camps (plus the CCC camp), see the 

list in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 43, which is based on the Minutes of a meeting of National 

Capital Parks officials and representatives of the Social Service Agencies of Washington area, 11 

December 1942. See also the Report on Camp Good Will and Camp Pleasant in Chopawamsic RDA for the 

summer of 1938 submitted to the NPS, 11 October 1938 by William H. Savin, Director of the Family 

Service Association of Washington, D.C.; and for appraisals and pictures of some of the camps, see Camp 

Appraisal Reports on the use of Camp 2-G for July and August in both 1938 and 1939 by the Jewish 

Community Center, Washington, D.C., and on Camp 2 for summer 1941 by the Arlington, Virginia, 

Council of Girls Scouts; in “Camp Appraisal Reports, Chopawamic, Virginia [1938-1941],” NPS Records 

(RG 79), E-47, Box 123, Folders 207-25 and Folder 314, National Archives II. 

26 Ira B. Lykes, superintendent, 1939-1951 of Prince William Forest Park, oral history interview by S. 

Herbert Evison, 23 November 1973, Audiotape #261, transcript, pages 38- 39, both located at NPS, 

Harpers Ferry Center Library, Harpers Ferry Center, W. Va. 

27 Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 42-47. 
92 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

people. Lykes understood he had to ensure influential public support for the new park. 

Some former park employees remembered him as strong-willed, and demanding as well 

as creative, but in interacting with the public, Lykes emphasized friendly persuasion. He 

sought, he said, to “convince people.”28 Through numerous acts of attention and 

kindness, he built a reservoir of good will toward the park among neighbors as well as 

officials and other influential individuals and groups, from mayors, chambers of 

commerce and tourist agencies to the charitable and youth organizations in Washington, 

conservationists, and wildlife groups, and the commanders at the adjacent Marine base at 

Quantico and the nearby Army post at Fort Belvoir.29 Indeed, in his primary mission of 

preserving and developing the park, Lykes, for much of his tenure, would be dealing with 

the military. 

Although the main function of the park was for civilian use, the military had 

begun using the park as early as 1938. Both the Corps of Engineers post at Belvoir and 

the Marine Corps Base at Quantico had conducted maneuvers that year in the emerging 

Chopawamsic RDA (Prince William Forest Park).30 Such field exercises continued, and 

after U.S. entry into the war in December 1941, they became so frequent, particularly 

from Quantico, that by early 1942, Lykes complained to his superiors that the Marines 

“have assumed the right to enter upon the area without [even] advising or consulting this 

office.”31 

Land and Cabin Camps at Catoctin Mountain Park 

 Catoctin Mountain Park, north of Frederick in central western Maryland, also 

originated as an NPS Recreational Demonstration Area in the mid-1930s. It was a 

mountain area with submarginal land on which the soil was badly eroded and the forests 

overharvested. Unemployment was widespread among the mainly poor, white residents, 

who qualified for resettlement. There was fresh water, roads, and excellent fishing, and 

the National Park Service believed that conservation could restore the area and that 

recreational facilities could be provided for metropolitan areas including Baltimore, 60 

miles away, and even Washington, D.C., 75 miles distant.32 The Catoctin Recreational 

Demonstration Area (RDA) was authorized in 1935, and land acquisition began under the 

 

28 Ira B. Lykes, retired in Venice, Florida, interviewed 4 September 1985, by Susan Cary Strickland, and

quoted in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 23. 

29 Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 23-24. 

30 Arthur Demaray to Lt. Col. R. Valliant, 31 August 1938, NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 54, Box 121, 

National Archives II. 

31 Ira Lykes, Monthly Report, May 1942, quoted in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 25-26. 

32 Matt Huppuch to Conrad Wirth, 12 July 1934, NPS Records (RG 79), RDA Program Files, Box 57, 

National Archives II. See also Edmund F. Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park: An Historic Resource Study

(Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2000), 159-160. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 93

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which had the funds.33 Although the 

nearest town, Thurmont, supported the establishment of a park to boost tourism, many of 

the Appalachian people who lived on and around Catoctin Mountain were unwilling to 

sell, and FERA began appraising the properties in preparation for going to court.34 

Meanwhile, NPS appointed a project manager to develop and supervise the new 

Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area. The man who would run the park for its first 

two decades, from 1935 until his retirement in 1957, was Garland B. (“Mike”) Williams. 

Despite the similarity of their first and last names there was no family relationship 

between Garland B. (“Mike”) Williams of the National Park Service and Garland H. 

Williams of the Federal Narcotics Bureau and the Office of Strategic Services.35 Mike 

Williams, the son of a yardmaster for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, was born in 

Chesterfield County, Virginia in 1893. He graduated from John Marshall High School in 

Richmond, took correspondence course in civil engineering, and then worked on railroad 

construction before joining the U.S. Army in World War I. During the war, his leadership 

abilities led to his promotion through the ranks from private to second lieutenant. 

Returning to civilian life in 1919, Mike Williams worked as a civil engineer on a variety 

of projects and then as a real estate appraiser for the railway. Laid off by the railway in 

the Depression, he soon obtained a position with a New Deal emergency relief 

employment agency, the Civil Works Administration, becoming manager for CWA 

projects in the City of Petersburg, Virginia.36

Mike Williams’ experience in dealing with difficult issues of land and labor 

impressed NPS assistant director Conrad Wirth, and in January 1935, he offered the 42-

year-old Virginian the position of managing the development of the new Catoctin RDA.37

Accepting the position, Williams immediately went to work to counter the local 

opposition which had spread because of unfounded rumors that the government wanted to 

use the land as an artillery range for nearby Fort Ritchie and fears of Republican county 

commissioners about government intervention and the loss of property taxes. Williams 

emphasized that plans were for a recreational park and that increased tourism would 

enhance local revenue. NPS reduced the land acquisition goal from 20,000 to 10,000 

acres, and Williams assured residents that condemnation would only be used as a last 

 

33 Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park, 160-161. 

34 “Catoctin Park Plans Menaced as Owners Refuse to Sell Land,” Washington Post, 25 June 1935, 1. 

35 To avoid confusion, the present study will refer to the two Garland Williams by using either their full 

names with different middle initials or by reference to “Mike” Williams for the NPS project manager and 

Major, later Lieutenant Colonel Williams for the official in Donovan’s organization. Lieutenant Colonel 

Williams left the OSS in July 1942; Mike Williams was the NPS manager at Catoctin from 22 January 

1935 until his retirement on 31 August 1957. 

36 Documents in the personnel file of Garland B. (“Mike”) Williams from the National Archives and 

Records Administration, National Personnel Records Center, Civilian Personnel Records, St. Louis, Mo, 

obtained by the author, 8 February 2005. 

37 See the appointment documents signed by H.C. Bryant, acting associate director, NPS, FERA Land 

Program, and Guy W. Numbers, acting chief, Division of Appointments, Mail, and Files of NPS; personnel

file of Garland B. (“Mike”) Williams National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel 

Records Center, St. Louis, Mo. 
94 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

resort. Meanwhile, he decided to obtain five-year leases for the government to use the 

land while attempting to convince owners to sell. He also began to line up support groups 

including fishing and conservation organizations, and several social welfare youth groups 

in Baltimore.38 By the fall of 1935, Williams’ campaign had produced results, and the 

commissioners of Frederick and Washington counties publicly praised the government’s 

program of purchasing the land for a park as “an asset to the nearby local 

communities.”39 With the five-year leases in hand and as the land acquisition program 

slowly proceeded, Mike Williams launched the construction program for the park in 

January 1936. Recruiting unemployed men and others with skills, Williams first put in 

fire break trails as a fire prevention measure, then erected a work camp, including a saw 

mill, blacksmith’s forge, garage and administration building at what would later be 

known as “Round Meadow.” The workers then constructed roads and bridges across 

steams to provide access to the planned recreational facilities.40 

 The facilities at Catoctin RDA were built over a three year period, between 

January 1936 and May1939. Plans called for two picnic areas and four group cabin 

camps, and Williams requested information, including plans for the latter, from 

Chopawamsic RDA, which had already completed its first camps.41 The rustic 

architecture and layout of the two camps were similar in the two parks, although the 

nearly 2,000 foot high forested Catoctin Mountain provided a different environment than 

the low-country, hilly woodlands of Chopawamsic. At Catoctin, the first two cabin camps 

were built of local chestnut logs and native stone. Cabin Camp 1, later known as “Misty 

Mount,” was erected on a rather rugged, wooded southern slope of the mountain. It had a 

capacity of 96 campers, plus counselors and other staff. 

Cabin Camp 2, “Greentop,” was established farther up, near the top of the 

mountain on a less rugged area that was already partly cleared and partly wooded. 

Greentop was created as a special needs camp for disabled children as a result of an 

intensive effort by the Baltimore-based Maryland League for Crippled Children, most of 

whose young clients had paralyzed legs as a result of poliomyelitis. Because of its special 

needs purpose, Cabin Camp 2 included an in-ground swimming pool and particular sports 

and therapy facilities. The League helped to purchase special equipment required for the 

children. The camp included a dining hall and kitchen, a kitchen staff quarters with 

bathrooms attached, two recreation lodges with porches, wash houses, a craft shop, and 

an infirmary, and quarters for the leaders and the staff. Since it was a co-ed camp, there 

were separate units of cabins for boys and for girls. It had a capacity for 72 campers plus 

counselors and staff members. Cabin Camp 3 located atop the mountain, was to be called 

 

38 Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park, 163-166; Barbara M. Kirkconnell, Catoctin Mountain Park: An 

Administrative History (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1988), 17. 

39 Catoctin Clarion, 18 October 1935, 1. 

40 Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park, 168-171. 

41 .A.P. Bursley to Garland B. Williams, 29 May 1936, Catoctin Mountain Park Archives, Catoctin 

Mountain Park Office. 

 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 95

“Hi-Catoctin.”42 It was planned as an organized group camp for boys with a capacity for 

72 campers and nine counselors in three subunits; each subunit in the standard NPS boys’ 

camp comprised six, four-cot cabins. In addition, the standard camp had an infirmary, a 

dining hall, and an administrative unit housing six staff members, one nurse, and four 

kitchen helpers. Plans called for a swimming pool, craft shop, playing field, camp fire 

circle, camp office, central shower, recreation hall and nature lore building. Instead of the 

logs used in the other two camps, Hi-Catoctin was constructed with frame construction 

and rough board siding. A lodge was constructed with a beautiful view of the valley 

below the mountaintop. The planned fourth cabin camp, a girls’ camp, was never built, 

due to lack of funding and changed conditions resulting from preparations for World War 

II.43

Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area opened fully to the public in the spring 

of 1939, although public use had begun in 1937 when Camp 1 was completed. The NPS 

press release lauded “the 10,000-acre preserve, of which 90 per cent is forested, embraces 

a rugged terrain ranging from 523 feet to 1,890 feet in elevation. Some of the higher 

summits command excellent views of the surrounding countryside. Approximately 50 

miles of nature trails lead the hiker through picturesque woodlands and beside sparkling 

streams.” The area was being adapted, the press release stated, for service as “a low cost 

organized camping center available to accredited character and health-building groups 

and institutions, but there also are facilities for picnicking and other recreational activities 

by the general public.”44

With the opening of the third of the cabin camps in spring 1939 and with land 

acquisition proceeding rapidly after a favorable decision by a U.S. District Court had 

cleared the way for condemnation, Williams turned to other improvements in the park. 45

From 1939 to1941, he was assisted by a unit of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) 

which arrived from Quantico, Virginia.46 Supervised by two Army officers, the 200 

young CCC men brought along some two dozen prefabricated portable structures, 

including dormitories, a mess hall, recreation hall, administrative center, residence for the 

camp superintendent, and a garage for their vehicles. They erected the CCC work camp 

 

42 Wehrle, Catoctin Mountain Park, 176-178; Kirkconnell, Administrative History of Catoctin Mountain 

Park, 35-39. 

43 Although Hi-Catoctin was planned as a boys’ camp, it was used in the summers of 1939 to 1941 for 

family camping by the Federal Camp Council of Washington, D.C., a group that offered camping vacations

for federal employees. Kirkconnell, Administrative History of Catoctin Mountain Park, 30, 41. 

44 “Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area, Maryland, General Information,” material for an 

informational leaflet on Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area including capacity numbers or each 

camp, included in E. M. Lisle, acting regional director, memorandum for the director, attn: editor-in-chief, 

9 May 1939, NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 47, RDA Files, Box 59, Folder 501,National Archives II. 

45 Although the park would benefit the public, many of the mountain people who had to give up their 

homes remained disgruntled even decades later. Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park, 172-175. 

46 CCC Company Number 1374, arrived from Quantico, Virginia where it had spent the previous four years 

constructing cabins and other facilities at Recreational Demonstration Areas like Chopawamsic RDA, in 

the area around Washington, D.C. John C. Paige, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park 

Service, 1933-1942: An Administrative History (Washington, D.C. National Park Service, 1985), 50. 
96 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

on a site just north of the Central Garage Unit and project office of Catoctin RDA, a site 

later known as Round Meadow.47 

At Catoctin between 1939 and 1941, the CCC workers engaged in a massive 

conservation and construction program. One of their first tasks in 1939 was to build a 

project manager’s residence on the Park Central Road for Mike Williams, his wife, and 

their three sons, who had been living in Frederick. In April 1941, they completed the 

Blue Blazes Contact Station at the entrance to the park on Route 77.48 In the meantime, 

they installed a water supply system, sewage systems, installed power lines, blazed miles 

of foot trails, improved roadways, planted 1,500 trees and shrubs, and enhanced Hunting 

and Owens Creeks by clearing obstructions and building small dams for fishing pools. In 

addition, they fought numerous brush fires successfully, but lost a battle with one in the 

fall of 1941 that destroyed their garage and trucks. With the economy booming under 

defense spending, Congress cut back CCC, and the unit at Catoctin was terminated in 

November 1941. With the help of the CCC boys and the FERA workers before them, 

NPS manager Mike Williams had created a magnificent new park.49 

The park was put to use as quickly as it became available. The polio-afflicted 

boys and girls from low-income families were brought by the Maryland League for 

Crippled Children to the park each summer between 1937 and 1941.50 At the camp, the 

physically-handicapped children, ages 7 to 16, spent eight-week periods, improving, it 

was hoped, their physical condition and mental outlook through healthy foods, exercise, 

arts and crafts, and camaraderie in a nature setting. The Salvation Army used Cabin 

Camp1 (Misty Mount) every summer from 1938 to 1941. A number of other 

organizations, including Girl Scouts from Frederick and Washington counties, used Misty 

Mount for short-term camping. Cabin Camp 3 (Hi-Catoctin) was used each summer from 

1939 to 1941 by the Federal Camp Council and by white Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops 

from Washington, D.C. There were no facilities for black groups at Catoctin in this 

period.51

 

47 Catoctin Clarion, 28 April 1939. 

48 That station was enlarged in 1964 and served as the visitor center and park administrative headquarters 

until 1973. 

49 When the CCC unit departed, Mike Williams was left with only 30 WPA workers. On the CCC projects 

at Catoctin, see Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park, 178, 185-186, 194-196; and Kirkconnell, Administrative 

History of Catoctin Mountain Park, 43-49, 71-75. 

50 The crippled children temporarily occupied Camp Number 1 (Misty Mount) as soon as it was completed 

in 1937, but moved to the new special needs facility, Camp Number 2 (Greentop), when it opened in 1938. 

51 Kirkconnell, Administrative History of Catoctin Mountain Park, 65-69. Racial segregation was still 

widespread in American society in the 1930s, reinforced by state laws and local ordinances in the South 

and often by custom in the North. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes supported the idea of making New 

Deal programs and benefits to all Americans, but he was also aware of the power of local customs and 

conditions. Thus black and white campgrounds, such as those at Chopawamsic RDA, were in practice 

segregated. However, Catoctin RDA did not provide for any black campgrounds, despite an effort by 

several prominent African Americans and black aid organizations in Baltimore in 1939 to have a camp for 

crippled black children constructed next to that for the white crippled children at Greentop. A 1940 NPS 

master plan recommended “a comprehensive development outline for Negro use.” However, Catoctin RDA 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 97

 With Nazi Germany expanding its control over Europe and its submarines striking 

across the Atlantic, President Roosevelt proclaimed an unlimited national emergency in 

the spring of 1941. Later that summer, even before the United States entered the war 

some of the Army’s young, draftees were sent to Catoctin, where tents were set up next to 

the CCC barracks at Round Meadow, and the new recruits were given military training.52

In a gesture of goodwill towards Great Britain, half a dozen Recreational Demonstration 

Areas were made available for British sailors to relax while their warships were being 

repaired at shipyards like Baltimore’s, and between June and November 1941, Catoctin 

RDA was host to 630 British sailors. They and their officers came in groups of 60 to 100 

to spend one or two weeks in the facilities of the park.53 Mike Williams reported that the 

British sailors behaved themselves in a gentlemanly manner and kept the grounds and 

buildings in excellent order, although a sizable telephone bill arrived after they had 

gone.54

The National Park Service and World War II 

 

 The National Park Service was put in a difficult situation by the country’s 

mobilization during World War II. Although its original mandate was to hold the 

resources of the national parks in trust for the American people, during the wartime 

emergency, it was often asked to place those resources at the disposal of the armed forces 

and war production agencies. The new director of the National Park Service, appointed in 

1940, was West Coast preservationist Newton B. Drury.

55 A dedicated Republican with a 

 

remained exclusively for white use in this period. Wehrle Catoctin Mountain Park, 179-80. Wehrle, 

Appendix 17, lists the organizations that did use Catoctin’s cabin camp facilities in the prewar period. 

52 Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park, 194. 

53 “Use of organized camps by British Sailors [Catoctin],” report, n.d., in NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 7, 

Central Classified File, 1939-1949, General, 201 National Defense-General, Box 73, Black Binder, “War 

Uses., C,” National Archives II. Some 7,000 British sailors enjoyed outdoor relaxation in NPS Recreational 

Demonstration Areas in the summer of 1941; By 1942, some 22,000 British sailors had participated 

“British Seamen Rest and Romp in U.S. Camps,” New York Herald-Tribune, 1 March 1942 

54 Matt C. Huppuch, chief, recreational use and consulting service, NPS, memorandum for Conrad Wirth, 

14 June 1941, subject: Cooperation with the Navy Department, NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 47, Box 57, 

Folder, 201; Garland B. Williams to Regional Director, report, 16 September to 1 November 1941, and 

statistical report to Conrad Wirth, 4 July 1944; all in NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 7 Central Classified 

Files, 1933-1949, 201 National Defense, C., Box 79, Folder 201, all in National Archives II. Lontime 

Thurmont resident, James H. Mackley, who was 12 in 1941, remembers that some of the British sailors 

visited the local school. “One of the sailors gave me a [British] penny. It was really big, the size of a half 

dollar.” James H. Mackley, telephone interview with the author, 13 June 2006. 

55 Formerly director of the Save the Redwoods League in California, Drury was the first NPS director not

to have prior experience in National Park management. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 

150; on Drury’s pre-NPS career, see Susan R. Schrepfer, The Fight to Save the Redwoods: A History of 

Environmental Reform, 1917-1978 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 23-76. For his 
98 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

suspicion of bureaucracy, Drury disagreed with the NPS’s dramatically expanded 

missions under New Deal, believing instead that the agency should have a more passive, 

caretaker role.56

 

Given the shift of government priorities to national defense, the National Park 

Service in World War II was reduced, as Drury later explained, to simply a “protection 

and maintenance basis.”57 Like other domestic federal agencies, NPS saw its 

appropriations and personnel drastically reduced during the war.58 But at the same time, 

the war confronted the National Park Service with unusual demands. The War and Navy 

Departments sought to use the national parks in many ways. Rest camps for military 

personnel were established in Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, and Sequoia national 

parks as well as many other NPS facilities, including a Marine Corps rest camp at 

Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area in 1945. Many of these cases, service 

personnel were housed in cabin camps, lodges, or even refurbished old CCC work camps 

on the park grounds. Hospitalization and rehabilitation was provided at Yosemite and 

Lava Beds national parks. The military held overnight bivouacs in a number of parks and 

extended maneuvers in Hawaii National Park and Mt. McKinley National Park in Alaska. 

The War Department also obtained permission to conduct extensive training in national 

parks such as in Yosemite, Shenandoah, Yellowstone, Isle Royale, and Death Valley as 

well, of course, as in Catoctin and Chopawamsic (Prince William Forest) Recreational 

Demonstration Areas. Some 2,600 permits and authorizations for use of park facilities 

and resources were granted for defense-related purposes.59 Most of the parks and 

recreational demonstration areas were also made available for use by military as well as 

civilian visitors, but with wartime rationing of gasoline and rubber, the number of visitors 

plummeted to one-third by 1943. Still some 35 million visitors, including eight million 

 

appointment, see diary entry of 23 June 1940, Harold L. Ickes, Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, 3 vols. 

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), 3:213. 

56 Newton B. Drury, “Former Directors Speak Out,” American Forests, 82/6 (June 1976): 28; and Foresta, 

America’s National Parks, 48-49. 

57 Newton B. Drury to the Secretary of the Interior, 28 July 1950, NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 19, National 

Archives; for an earlier statement, see Drury, “What the War Is Doing to National Parks and Where They

Will Be at Its Close,” Living Wilderness (May 9, 1944): 11. 

58 The number of permanent fulltime NPS employees was cut from 6,000 in November 1941 to 1,600 in 

June 1944. NPS headquarters was moved to Chicago for the duration of the war. The basic NPS budget 

(for administration, maintenance, and operations) remained stable at around $4.5 million a year, but 

appropriations for land acquisition, construction, and development were cut from $26 million in fiscal 1940 

to $16 million by fiscal 1943, and then completely eliminated for the rest of the war. Charles W. Porter III, 

History Branch, NPS, “National Park Service War Work, December 7, 1941-June 30, 1944,” pp. 47-48, a 

63 page typescript report, n.d. c. 1944, in NPS Records (RG 79), Director Newton B. Drury’s Files, Entry 

19, Box 23, National Archives II. 

59 Newton B. Drury to Secretary of the Interior, subject: War Times Uses of the National Park,” 28 July

1950 [during the Korean War], NPS Records (RG 79), Papers of Newton B. Drury, Entry 19, Box 23, 

Folder, “Wartime Experience of N.P.S.” Charles W. Porter, III, “Supplement Covering National Park 

Service War Work, June 30, 1944 to October 1, 1945,” p. 13, n.d., c. 1945, 16 page typescript, 

accompanying “National Service War Work” NPS Records (RG 79), Papers of Newton B. Drury, Entry 19, 

Box 23, National Archives II. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 99

men and women in uniform, visited the national parks during the war putting an 

additional burden on the severely reduced park staffs.60 

 Faced with wartime demands, the National Park Service concluded that the good 

of the nation lay in conserving the parks intact for future generations. As Drury declared 

during the war, while the National Park Service recognized its obligation to help the war 

effort, it needed “to hold intact those things entrusted to it—the properties themselves, 

the basic organization to perform its tasks, and, most important of all, the uniquely 

American concept under which the national parks are preserved inviolate for the present 

and future benefit of all of our people.”61 As early as November 1940, with the beginning 

of the defense mobilization before the United States entered the war, Drury and his staff 

had formulated criteria for evaluating possible war uses of the parks. The criteria 

emphasized the need to determine that the request for usage came from a defense agency, 

that the use of park land was necessary for defense and that it would not cause irreparable 

damage to the park. NPS also wanted to ensure that alternatives to using park land had 

been considered and exhausted. If it was agreed that the military’s use was essential, then 

the use permit should include specific conditions to protect the park, and there should be 

provisions that when the military usage was terminated, the military repair any damages 

and restore the property to its previous condition.62 Drury later concluded that NPS had 

been surprisingly successful in meeting its criteria and preventing irreparable harm to the 

parks.63

 

60 Visitors to the national parks dropped from 21 million in fiscal 1941 to 10 million in 1942, and reached 

the lowest point of 7 million in 1943, but there 8 million in 1944, 10 million in 1945, and back to 21

million in 1946. During the war, a total of 8 million visitors were men and women in uniform. Newton B. 

Drury to Assistant Secretary of the Interior Doty, subject: War Times Uses of the National Parks,” 2 

August 1950 [during the Korean War], NPS Records (RG 79), Papers of Newton B. Drury, Entry 19, Box 

23, “Wartime Experience of N.P.S.” folder, National Archives II. 

61 Newton B. Drury statement in the National Park Service, Annual Report to the Secretary of the Interior, 

1942, reprinted in Charles W. Porter III, History Branch, NPS, “National Park Service War Work, 

December 7, 1941-June 30, 1944,” p. 1. For similar during the war as NPS sought support from 

conservation groups, see Newton B. Drury, “The National Parks in Wartime,” American Forests (August 

1943); and Carl P. Russell, National Park Service, “The National Parks in Wartime,” Outdoor America

(July-August 1943), clippings , which along with the above document are in NPS Records (RG 79), Papers

of Newton B. Drury, Entry 19, Box 23, “Wartime Experience of N.P.S.” folder, National Archives II. 

62 Memorandum from NPS Director Newton B. Drury to Washington Office and all Field Offices, 27 

November 1940, reprinted in “National Park Service War Work, December 7, 1941-June 30, 1944” pp. 2-3, 

NPS Records (RG 79), Director Newton B. Drury’s Files, Entry 19, Box 23, National Archives II. 

63 Newton B. Drury, Oral History Interview, “Parks and Redwoods, 1919-1971,” conducted by Amelia 

Roberts Fry and Susan Schrepfer, 2 vols., Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of 

California, Berkeley, 1972, 2:405-6. 
100 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

Obtaining Permits for Military Training Camps 

 At Donovan’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., Colonel M. Preston Goodfellow 

and his executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Garland H. Williams, had determined early 

in 1942 that Catoctin and Chopawamsic (Prince William Forest Park) would make 

valuable sites for the paramilitary training camps. Negotiations for military use of these 

two NPS parks proceeded at the departmental level between the War Department and the 

Department of the Interior.64 On March 24, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson wrote to 

Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes that “it has been determined that a military 

necessity exists for the acquisition by purchase and by transfer” of certain government 

lands, buildings, and other improvements under control of the National Park Service in 

Catoctin and Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Areas. Stimson asked that these 

be transferred by executive order to the War Department for military purposes. The 

matter was urgent, he wrote, as troops were scheduled to arrive at those locations that 

week, and he asked for immediate permission to occupy and use those NPS sites, pending 

their formal transfer to the War Department. He noted that the War Department planned 

to purchase tracts of land within the training area that remained in private hands. 

Consciously avoiding any mention of Donovan’s organization, Stimson cautioned that 

“The War program demands that the utmost secrecy be maintained regarding the military 

use of this property. That fact, or the arm of the service so using this property, should not 

appear in published Federal Records.”65

 Neither Secretary Ickes nor NPS Director Drury wanted to have the parks turned 

into military training camps and certainly not for the duration of the war as Stimson had 

requested. On 25 March 1942, the Secretary of the Interior wrote to Stimson, reminding 

him that these RDAs had been developed for work “of vital importance, “primarily for 

rebuilding the health” of children and adults from lower income groups in Baltimore and 

Washington. He directed that the War Department be granted a use permit but only until 

1 June 1942—just over two months—with the understanding that the NPS would help the 

War Department locate an alternative site and bring in portable CCC barracks for 

housing. If an acceptable alternative could not be found, Ickes agreed to grant a specialuse permit but only on a year-to-year basis. In keeping with Drury’s criteria, Ickes 

insisted that the military was not allowed to make any changes in the park without prior 

review and concurrence by the National Park Service. “The [NPS] managers who are 

 

64 In keeping with the NPS criteria for preserving the parks, Interior initially resisted the War Department’s 

request for the properties. In mid-March 1942, Donovan’s office had sent up the chain of command a letter 

stating that there was a “military necessity” for obtaining substantial parts of the two RDAs for a military 

training program. The classified “secret” letter of 11 March 1942 from the Coordinator of Information 

asserting the military necessity of acquiring parts of the parks, in this case Catoctin, is cited in Maj. Gen. 

Thomas H. Robins, assistant chief of engineers, to Commanding General of the Services of Supply, 19 

March 1942, subject: Land Acquisition—Troop Housing, Vicinity of Washington, D.C. copy in World War 

II File, General Information Folder, Catoctin Mountain Park Archives, Catoctin Mountain Park, Thurmont, 

Md. 

65 Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, 24 March 1942, NPS 

Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201 National Defense, Box 73, Folder 201, 

National Archives II. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 101

now on the areas [Catoctin and Chopawamsic] will remain there, will be of all possible 

assistance to the Army, and also will aid in protection of the areas from fire and abuse.”66 

 Donovan’s organization was not to be deterred, however, and on Saturday, March 

28, 1942, three days after Ickes’ temporary, short-term authorization, two military 

officers representing Lt. Col. Garland H. Williams’ office arrived unannounced at 

Chopawamsic (Prince William Forest Park). They introduced themselves to NPS Project 

Manager Ira B. Lykes and requested permission to inspect Cabin Camps 2 and 5 with him 

to determine their housing capacities. Afterward at Lykes’ office, they took notes on the 

layout plans for all five cabin camps. Lykes handed them copies of the Rules and 

Regulations for the use of the facilities issued by the Secretary of the Interior in 1937. 

Designed to preserve public property, the regulations protected structures, trees, flowers, 

rocks, wildlife and relics, prohibited camping outside designated areas, and banned 

firearms and explosives. They last seemed particularly quaint, given what Special 

Operations plan to do in the two parks, but it did put Donovan’s organization on notice 

that the National Park Service intended to continue the preservation of the property 

entrusted to its care. The two officers told Lykes that their men would start arriving to 

occupy Cabin Camp 5 in four days on Wednesday, April 1st.

67 The same military 

takeover date, 1 April1942, was set for Catoctin RDA.68

Rumors immediately flew thick and fast around both Chopwamsic and Catoctin 

about what was happening to the parks. On 5 April 1942, an outdoor sports columnist 

reported in the Baltimore American that Catoctin RDA had been “taken over for use in 

the present war effort” and was closed to the public.69 The head of Maryland’s State 

Parks wrote to NPS concerning rumors that the Army was going to establish an Officer’s 

Candidate School there and conflicting rumors that the Army would take all of the park 

or simply the half north of the Thurmont-Foxville Road (today Route 77). Conrad Wirth 

responded that the Army wanted only the area north of the road and that a use permit had 

been granted but only until 1 June. It was hoped, he wrote, that the Army would vacate 

 

66 Secretary of the Interior to Secretary of War, 25 March 1942, copy in National Park Service Records 

(RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201 National Defense, Box 73, Folder 201, National 

Archives II. Kirkconnell’s Administrative History of Catoctin Mountain Park, page 85, errs in listing the 

permit to 1 June 1943. Ickes’ letter granted it only to 1 June 1942. 

67 Ira B. Lykes to Conrad L. Wirth, Confidential memorandum, 30 March 1942, with copy of 19 April 1937 

Rules and Regulations, in National Park Service Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, 

General, 201 National Defense, Chopawamsic, Project CHO-IV-1&1A, Box 73, Folder 201, National 

Archives II. The two officers were probably Capt. William J. Hixson, the first commanding officer of 

Detachment A and Lt. Rex Applegate, an instructor in pistol shooting at Area B, both of whom returned to 

Chopawamsic on Tuesday, 31 March 1942 with Lt. Col. Garland H. Williams 

68 A year later, an OSS report indicated that “we have utilized the property [at Catoctin] for the Office of 

Strategic Services since April 1, 1942....” “F.J.B.” [Lt. F.J. Ball] to Major [Otto C.] Doering, Executive 

Officer OSS HQ, 30 March 1943, subject: Release of Area “B,” OSS Records (RG 79), Entry 137, Box 3, 

Folder 24, National Archives II. 

69 The Baltimore American, 5 April 1942; the columnist was J. Hammond Brown. 
102 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

by then, but “it may be necessary to extend this permit for a much longer period.”70 On 

10 April, the Catoctin Enterprise, a weekly newspaper from Thurmont, reported that 

although no announcement was made as to how the area would be used, the government 

was taking over Catoctin “for use in the war effort” and “the public will be barred from 

entry into the area proper.”71 Indeed, during the war, public recreational use of the 

Catoctin RDA was limited to picnicking in the West Picnic Area and trout fishing on Big 

Hunting Creek, both of which were south of the Thurmont-Foxville Road and therefore 

outside the military area of the park.72 During the war, although local residents around 

Catoctin—as well as around Chopawamsic RDA down near Quantico—realized that the 

Army had men in the closed off parks, they never knew until recent years that these were 

special soldiers in “Wild Bill” Donovan’s clandestine organization.73

When Donovan’s organization took over Catoctin and Chopawamsic Recreational 

Demonstration Areas in April 1942, the public and any unauthorized visitors were barred 

from entry, warning signs were posted, sentries were stationed at the entrances and armed 

guards periodically patrolled the perimeter. It soon became clear to the National Park 

Service that the military intended to stay. Years later, Ira Lykes recalled that in early 

spring 1942, NPS Director Newton Drury and his staff had advised him that “Colonel 

Donovan and his cloak and dagger boys” were looking for a place and had decided that 

Chopawamic was ideal for their purposes. “We would have to cancel all the leases on 

camp grounds, and they would move the OSS in there. I was to remain as the liaison 

between the National Park Service [and OSS] and help them in any development they 

wanted done in the war effort.”74 NPS did notify the charitable and other social agencies 

that had been issued permits for the summer 1942 camping season at Catoctin and 

Chopawamsic RDAs that because of the military, they could not use the park. It offered 

them alternative facilities at abandoned CCC camps in smaller RDAs in Virginia and 

Pennsylvania.75 Faced with the upcoming expiration on 1 June of the two-month 

 

70 Karl E. Pfeiffer to Conrad L. Wirth, 6 April 1942 and Wirth to Pfeiffer, 13 April 1942, National Park 

Service Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201 National Defense, Box 73, 

Folder 201, National Archives II. 

71 “Catoctin Area Is Ordered Closed to the Public,” Catoctin Enterprise, 10 April 1942, 1. 

72 Garland B. Williams, Narrative Reports for months of April 1942 and June 1943; NPS Records (RG 79), 

Entry 47, RDA Files, Boxes 57 and 61, National Archives II. 

73 Telephone interviews by the author with longtime residents of Thurmont, Maryland: John Kinnaird, 

Frank Long, 7 June 2006; James H. Mackley, 13 June 2006; and with longtime Triangle,Virginia resident,

Robert A. Noile, 27 April 2007. 

74Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview by S. Herbert Evison, 23 November 1973, Audiotape #261, transcript, 

page 39, both located at NPS’s Harpers Ferry Center Library, Harpers Ferry Center, W.Va. 

75 Newton B. Drury to Assistant Secretary of the Interior Oscar L. Chapman, 15 April 1942; Stimson to 

Ickes, 22 May 1942, both in NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 47, Box 126, Folder 901; Herbert Evison, acting 

superintendent of land planning, memo to Garland B. (Mike) Williams, 11 June 1942; and G.B. Williams,

memorandum to the director, attn: Mr. Wirth, 14 June 1942; both in (RG 79), Entry 47, RDA Files, Box 61, 

Folder, Catoctin; and Herbert Evison, NPS, memo for the manager of Chopawamsic RDA, 16 June 1942, 

NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 47, RDA Files, Box 124, Folder 600, all in National Archives II. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 103

temporary permit, Secretary of War formally requested permission to continue to 

“occupy” the two parks for “the duration of the present emergency.”76 

The Department of the Interior accepted the fact that the military would use the 

parks, but it still sought to control the duration and the terms of that usage. Consequently 

on 16 May 1942, the Secretary of the Interior issued special use permits, retroactive since 

March 25th, authorizing the War Department to use certain lands and facilities within 

Chopawamsic and Catoctin RDAs. The permit did not provide an expiration date but 

indicated that it was “revocable at will by the Secretary of the Interior.”77 Seeking to 

preserve the parks during their use for commando-style training, the permit had a number 

of protective provisions. It excluded from the NPS administrative and staff facilities from 

military control. To protect the environment, the permit required “that precaution shall be 

taken to preserve and protect all objects of a geological and historical nature....that 

wherever possible, structures, roads, as well as trees, shrubs and other natural terrain 

features, shall remain unmolested...that every precaution shall be taken to protect the 

Area from fire and vandalism” and that the military would help fight forest fires. The 

normal prohibition against weapons or explosives in the park was omitted in this special 

permit for the military, but the permit did require NPS approval for any new structures 

the military would build and required that their location was to be determined through 

consultation between the military and the NPS park manager. Upon termination of 

military usage, all structures erected by the Army were to be transferred to the 

Department of the Interior or removed by the War Department, “and the site restored as 

nearly as possible to its condition at the time of the issuance of this permit, at the option 

of the Secretary of the Interior.” An accompanying letter from the Secretary of the 

Interior stated, as the Army had agreed, that private lands purchased by the War 

Department within Catoctin and Chopawamsic RDA would be transferred to the 

Department of the Interior to inclusion in the parks when the need for them for national 

defense was ended. 

 

76 Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, 22 April 1942; Stimson 

to Ickes, 3 May 1942, NPS (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201 National Defense, 

Box 73, Folder 201, National Archives II. 

77 John J. Dempsey, Acting Secretary of the Interior to Secretary of War, 16 May 1942, and “Special Use 

Permit Authorizing Use of Land in the Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area, Maryland, by the War 

Department for National Defense Purposes” signed by Dempsey, 16 May 1942 both in NPS Records (RG 

79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201 National Defense, Box 73, Folder 201. Special Use 

Permit for Chopawamsic, 16 May 1942, with identical provisions, is in (RG 79), Central Classified File, 

1933-1949, General, 201 National Defense, Chopawamsic, Project CHO-IV-1&1A, Box 73, Folder 201, 

National Archives II. Dempsey’s original letter of 16 May 1942 had accepted “for the duration of the 

presentation emergency,” but the permit, pre-dated 16 May 1942 (apparently neither written nor delivered 

until mid-June), listed no expiration date, indicating instead that the permit was “revocable at will by the 

Secretary of the Interior,” which was apparently as far as Ickes was willing to go. 
104 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 

Acquiring Additional Land for the Camps 

The War Department moved quickly to facilitate the training camps for 

Donovan’s organization. On 30 March 1942, a representative of the Army’s land 

acquisition office arrived at Chopawamsic RDA (Prince William Forest Park) with the 

intention of acquiring privately held tracts within the area assigned to the military as 

quickly as possible.78 Lykes and John E. Gum, Acting Superintendent of one of the CCC 

work camps in the park, spent the morning with him going over the acquisition status of 

the remaining private properties lying north of Joplin Road (today Route 619).79 Lykes 

urged the War Department to acquire the ramshackle, wooded area on the eastern edge of 

the park known as “Batestown,” that the park manager denounced as “a hot-bed of 

bootleggers, thieves and vice.” He warned that it would be “a potential health hazard to 

the adjoining Camps 1 & 4 and the Quantico Creek Watershed.” For years, the park 

manager and the local sheriff had tried to catch the moonshiners, but they never did. 

Now, as Lykes wrote to Conrad Wirth, “I believe every effort should be made to induce 

them [the War Department] to acquire these properties as well as other interspersed tracts 

throughout the [Chopawamsic] Area.”80

 At that time, Chopawamsic RDA (Prince William Forest Park) was composed of 

14, 446 acres obtained by NPS between 1935 and 1941.

81 During the next year, the War 

 

78 By 12 March 1942, the Coordinator of Information’s office had allocated funds for the acquisition and

construction of training centers, and within a week after the Secretary of the Interior had signed the

temporary permit on 25 March, a representative of the War Department’s Division of [Land] Acquisition 

arrived at Chopawamsic RDA W.O. Hall, to Bernard L. Gladieux, 12 March 1942, subject: status of K & L 

Activities—COI, in Records of the Bureau of the Budget (RG 51), Series 39.19, Emergency and War 

Agencies, Folder, COI-General Administration. Hall reported that in regard to the K & L (unvouchered 

funds) activities, the Office of the Coordinator of Information had allocated around $2 million for the 

purchase of a vessel for secret missions, for airplanes for secret missions, and for the construction of 

training centers in the United States and England for enlisted men and volunteer personnel for special

missions. A copy of the document is in CIA Records (RG 263), Thomas Troy File, Box 2, Folder 19, 

National Archives II. 

79 Ira B. Lykes to Conrad L. Wirth, confidential memorandum, 30 March 1942 [a separate memorandum 

from the one of the same date cited above], in NPS Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, 

General, 201 National Defense, Chopawamsic, Project CHO-II-1, Box 81, Folder 201, National Archives 

II. A longtime resident of the area, Gum supervised CCC camp ND-16. 

80 Ira B. Lykes to Conrad L. Wirth, confidential memorandum, 31 March 1942, in NPS Records (RG 79), 

Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201 National Defense, Chopawamsic, Project CHO-II-1, Box

81, Folder 201, National Archives II. 

81 The 14,446 acre figure is from Ira B. Lykes to F.F. Gillen, December 1941, NPS Records (RG 79), File 

1460/3, which in 1986 was at the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland, and was cited

in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 28. Archivists believe that those NPS records, including Ira 

Lykes’ correspondence and monthly reports cited by Strickland were later transferred to National Archives 

II in College Park, Maryland, but they cannot be found there. Telephone conservations by the author with 

Joseph N. Groomes, Washington National Records Center, 14 October 2005; Joseph D. Schwarz, archivist 

for NPS records at the National Archives II, 17 October 2005; and Michael Grimes and Rene Jaussaud of 

NPS’s National Capital Region, 21 October 2005. 
 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort 105

Department acquired an additional 1,000 to 1,500 acres of isolated, privately held tracts 

scattered within the park, which were acquired for security purposes.82 The “Batestown” 

area was not among the parcels acquired during the war. It still exists today, although the 

park acquired some of it in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Similarly, in Maryland, the War Department gave priority to acquire the last inpark private properties at Catoctin RDA (now Catoctin Mountain Park). Starting the first 

week in April, the Real Estate Branch of the Corps of Engineers mapped the area. The 

War Department soon leased 20 acres from the Church of the Brethren. By the end of 

1942, it had by various means, optioned and then purchased from private owners 225 

acres of land within the park north of current Route 77.83 The next year, it obtained the 

last fifty acres of private property within the areas of Catoctin park used by the military, 

bringing the total War Department acquisition at Catoctin to 275 acres.84

As Colonel Preston Goodfellow recalled proudly in 1945: “We got three camps 

[OSS Areas A, B, and C] from the Department of Interior for a dollar a year, provided 

we’d clean up [acquisition of] the farm areas which they contained. We had the War 

Department real estate people condemn them, then bought them up.”85 

 

82 The transactions were handled by the Army Corps of Engineers’ regional Real Estate and Land 

Acquisition Office in Baltimore. Capt. Stanley H. Lyson, S-4 (Supply), OSS Schools and Training 

Division, to Lt. Warner, undated [c. February 1945], subject: Data on Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

83 Kirkconnell, Administrative History of Catoctin Mountain Park, 92. For details, see War Department, 

Corps of Engineers, Real Estate Branch, “Map Showing Government Property, Catoctin Area,” 26 May 

1942, NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 21, Office of the Chief Counsel, Legislature File, 1932-1950, Box 76,

Folder HR 3807; and “Report Furnished Director in Response to Memorandum of August 30, 1943,” 

“County of Frederick,” “County of Washington,” NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 47, RDAs, Box 60, Folder 

601, both in National Archives II. 

84 Map showing Government Property Catoctin Area, prepared by the War Department, Corps of 

Engineers, Real Estate Branch, originally 26 May 1942, but updated, in NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 21, 

Office of the Chief Counsel, Legislative File, 1932-1950, Box 76, Folder “HR 3807, National Archives II.

85 M. Preston Goodfellow, interviewed for the OSS official history in 1945, and quoted in History of 

Schools and Training Branch, OSS, 29. 
106 Chapter 3 Parks Join the War Effort