Historic Walker County

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Above: Men with the Civilian
Conservation Corps building the dam
that made Lake Raven.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, DENVER.
Below: Robert A. Josey Boy Scout
Lodge built as part of a Works
Progress Administration project.
COURTESY OF THE EDITOR.
reconstruction plans for the site. On May 18,
1956, the park officially reopened after a
massive reconstruction effort. 77
Another New Deal program, the Civil Works
Administration (CWA), created temporary
manual labor jobs, which assisted the
unemployed in Walker County and the broader
region. Locally, the CWA facilitated the
construction of the Robert A. Josey Boy Scout
Lodge in Huntsville. Josey, a self-made
millionaire and local philanthropist donated
$5,000 to purchase the land for the lodge and
set up a $30,000 trust fund to maintain it. The
CWA then contributed $10,000 for
construction and labor, and the group
completed the building in 75 days. On June 17,
1934, Huntsville citizens gathered for the
dedication of the new lodge, which was “nestled
in a little ravine in the pine woods just south of
the city.” Each year the Josey trust fund also
issued small rewards of $100 (later raised to
$500) to Boy Scouts who demonstrated
outstanding community service. 78
In 1935, President Roosevelt activated the
Works Progress Administration (WPA), which
provided employment for millions of people in
public works projects around the country.
Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided
employment for 600,000 Texans who built
bridges, wrote stories, and surveyed
archeological sites. One of the most important
programs implemented in East Texas was the
collection of slave narratives, an effort that was
conducted by the Federal Writer’s Project of the
WPA. Between 1936 and 1938, the Project
conducted personal interviews with roughly
three hundred former slaves in Texas and
approximately a dozen from Walker County.
Local subjects included Armstead and Harriet
Barrett, Carey Davenport, Tom Holland, and
Henry Probasco. In one interview, Tom Holland
explained his responsibilities to his former
master, “I chopped cotton and plowed and split
rails, and then was a horse rider.” He also
explained that they “allus [always] had plenty to
eat, sich [such] as it was them days, plenty wild
meat and cornbread cooked in ashes.” 79
T H E T E X A S P R I S O N
R O D E O A N D C E N T E N N I A L
C E L E B R A T I O N
In 1930, the board of directors for the Texas
Prison System appointed Marshall Lee Simmons
as its General Manager. Known as a reformer,
Simmons worked to improve living and
working conditions within the system. He
solved numerous financial deficiencies, rooted
out fraud and organizational negligence, and
sought to end inmate abuse that had long
tarnished the reputation of the Texas Prison
System. In addition, Simmons aggressively
pursued the infamous outlaws, Bonnie Parker
and Clyde Barrow. In 1934, after Bonnie and
Clyde’s embarrassing raid on the Eastham farm
in Houston County, Simmons received
permission from Governor Miriam (Ma)
Ferguson to retain the services of Texas Ranger
3 6 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y