User:Protondecay123/Lake Sylvia Recreation Area

Lake Sylvia Recreation Area

History and Construction
Lake Sylvia was constructed by the Thornburg Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews in 1936 on Narrow Creek in Perry County Arkansas. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal New Deal agency, constructed Camp Ouachita from 1936 to 1940 for the Little Rock Area Girl Scout Council (LRGSC) in the Ouachita National Forest, twelve miles south of Perryville (Perry County) and some thirty-six miles west of Little Rock (Pulaski County). Camp Ouachita, the nation’s only surviving WPA-constructed Girl Scout camp complex, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Today, Camp Ouachita is on the northwest shoreline, and the Lake Sylvia Recreation Area lies along the southern shore. The recreation area is not part of the Camp Ouachita National Historic District. The WPA and the CCC worked at the same time on separate projects sharing a small public lake, a unique moment in New Deal history, and research at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has proven finally that the CCC was not involved with any aspect of Camp Ouachita’s construction; the WPA alone built Camp