The Civilian Conservation Corps organized Company 6413, Camp Whitmore, P-203, with one-hundred-ninety-five men at Lawrenceburg, Tennessee July 1, 1933. On July 8, 1933 most of the men boarded the train for California. They arrived with an outbreak of measles. The men were quarantined in Whitmore for six weeks before they could leave the camp.

The army assigned Capt. Chauncey D. Jones to Whitmore to build the camp facilities. Jones was in the military reserve when he was called to active duty to serve in the CCC. He wrote these letters to his sister in 1964. The letters have been edited for clarity and to omit material not pertinent to Whitmore. Capt. Jones writes:

Ohio, 1933
On Saturday morning, May 20, 1933, I walked out to the mail box, the kids romping along with me. In the mail box was a directive that changed my whole life. Orders from Ft. Hayes, Columbus, Ohio, directing me to report on May 22, 1933, to Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Short notice.

Rachel [his wife] and I spent the weekend getting my military wardrobe and gear shaped up and in packing my foot locker. Monday morning Rachel drove me into the Dayton Bus Depot. I told her that I would probably run up home for a weekend in a couple of weeks. It was six months to the day when I next saw her and the kids upon their arrival in Redding, California.

Reporting in at Ft. Knox, I was assigned to duty as adjutant of the sprawling reception center. Local boards all over the 5th Corps area, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, were sending CCC applicants streaming into the Center. The Center would receive, examine, enroll, clothe, equip them and organize them into companies of 200 to 225 men. Most of the men were from the middle west and in the eastern sections of the country, while most of the conservation work to be done by the CCC was in the western areas of the country.

I was ordered to [active] duty with the CCC because of my background in Scouting and similar work. The officer commanding the company next to mine was a fellow name of Major George Patton. In a few days Patton and I entrained our two companies for California.

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