ABOUT THE PROJECT

The California’s Living New Deal Project is a growing collaborative effort to identify, map, interpret, and commemorate the 75th anniversary of the vast public works legacy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The Project documents the cumulative impact of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Public Works Administration (PWA), Works Progress Administration (WPA), and other New Deal programs on the Golden State.

With generous funding from the Columbia Foundation and others, the California Historical Society in partnership with U.C. Berkeley's Institute for Research in Labor and Employment Library and the California Studies Center has developed the California’s Living New Deal Project to involve the public in connecting this history to contemporary life.

Using the Internet, publications, public events, and other programs, the California’s Living New Deal Project enlists the aid of teachers, students, librarians, historians, elders, and others throughout the State to share this vital history, and to serve as a model for a national inventory.

The California’s Living New Deal Project will expand throughout the 75th anniversary year of 2008 and beyond; it includes:

• This website, hosted by the IRLE Library, to serve as an internet-based resource for New Deal information, studies, and discussions.
• A searchable online database and digital map enables website visitors to discover what the New Deal did for their communities and serves as an electronic guidebook to New Deal sites throughout California. The digital map shows spatially the extent and variety of New Deal sites and will grow as sites are identified.
• A book, by Project scholar Gray Brechin, illustrated with archival and contemporary photographs encapsulating the findings of the Project.
• A traveling museum exhibition, featuring historic and contemporary photographs and artifacts.
• Officially declared “New Deal Days” to honor veterans.
• Testimonial histories collected from those who participated in New Deal projects. 
• Illustrated lectures on New Deal sites in local communities. 
• Presentations at organizational meetings explaining the technical aspects of the Project so that it can be replicated elsewhere.  
• Articles in magazines and newspapers to solicit information on New Deal sites. 
• Public programs including lectures, tours, and specially designed forums for scholars and the public to discuss the New Deal's goals and legacy.