Book excerpt: The 1930¿s was the era of the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and governement work programs. Unemployment was staggering, adversity was widespread and the beardless youth of America faced a bleak future. The first and most successful New Deal work program was The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Millions of unemployed boys from the cities, farms and plains joined ¿Roosevelt¿s¿ Tree Army¿. With shovels and axes, they planted billions of trees, fought forest fires and advanced the conservation movement by a generation in many sections of the US. Between 1933 - 1940, they toiled along the cliffs of the Palisades and the marshes of the Meadowlands. They worked, they played, they grew up and in the process became a generation of young men with a newfound respect for conservation and patriotism. They were "The Boys of Bergen".