July 2023 • Nebraskaland 45
Niobrara Tribune in 1933.
The Great Depression had already begun, however. With
so many people out of work, President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in 1933, as part of his New Deal, created the
Civilian Conservation Corps. The work relief program put
nearly 3 million men to work during the nine years it existed.
Among the many jobs they undertook was the construction
of 700 new state parks and roads, trails and shelters at others.
In 1934 and 1935, men from a CCC work camp in Niobrara
built cabins, roads and other amenities at the park, including
the picnic shelter. It was built with massive, hand-hewn
wood posts and beams tied together with curved knee braces,
and a stone fi replace at one end. It diff ered from shelters
CCC crews built at Ponca and Chadron state parks and Dead
Timber, Walgren Lake and the Wildcat Hills state recreation
areas, iconic stone structures that still stand today.
Now known simply as Niobrara State Park, the park opened
in 1935. An advertisement in Outdoor Nebraska, the precursor
to this magazine, in 1936 dubbed the park "A rest haven in
pleasant surroundings." A 1944 article in Outdoor Nebraska
said it was built upon a beautiful wooded island of 800 acres,
as "[g]listening white cottages, group camps, administrative
buildings dot the entire area."
The park's new picnic shelter stood on the banks of the
lagoon that wound through the park, where visitors could
rent paddleboats, fi sh and swim. It hosted countless picnics
and events.
"Oh yeah. We had picnics there when school got out. And
we always had a school picnic," said 92-year-old Delberta
Peterson, a long-time resident of Niobrara, who had memories
An unidentifi ed man kicks back with a book and cigar while fi shing across the lagoon from the shelter sometime prior to 1966.
The lagoon was the centerpiece of the park. LOU ELL, NEBRASKALAND MAGAZINE
