New Research Data Available of Texas New Deal Projects

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AUSTIN— Unlock the rich history surrounding Texas State Park lands and buildings with new research data collected by the Historic Sites and Structures program at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

More than 3,000 photographs and related documents of Works Progress Administration projects in Texas are now available online. Images of sites such as the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site and Caddo Lake State Park are included among the finds, which capture a variety of New Deal efforts across the state.

“In 2023, the Texas State Parks system will celebrate its centennial, and several New Deal agencies helped build the core of that system,” said Cynthia Brandimarte, Director of the Historic Sites and Structures Program for Texas State Parks.

Texas State Parks’ Preservation, Research, and Outreach Specialist Jennifer Carpenter noted, “The photographs are particularly valuable because WPA textual records are spotty and difficult to access.”

The photos can be found on the Texas and the WPA Flickr page and are arranged by county and include projects both in and out of the Texas State Park system. The original photos are housed at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland.

The research was funded by the Summerlee Foundation and aimed to broaden the understanding of how New Deal work programs other than the Civilian Conservation Corps contributed to park development.

“Through this research, we came to realize that several projects sponsored by the WPA in Texas are continued by our agency today,” said Brandimarte. “Such projects include wildlife, natural and cultural resource surveys, nature camps and recreational programs, just to name a few.”

An article on this collection is slated for publication in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in January 2017.

For more information about Texas CCC parks, visit http://texascccparks.org/.