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In 1983, federal funds available for highways will increase by about $4 billion, and funds for public transit will increase by about $1 billion.

On a trail near the summit of Mt. San Jacinto, the California Conservation Corps is at work. Using rock hammers and shovels, a crew of young men and women lays a stretch of riprap-crushed rock and fill-over a steep grade of switchbacks. A teen-age girl and her father walk up the trail and stop to catch their breaths. "I had no idea somebody actually did this sort of work," says the girl. Joe Schroeder, busy cutting chinquapin off the sides of the trail, explains to the girl about the CCC and its backcountry projects. "When you're old enough, you ought to join," he concludes. "It's really a lot of fun."

Schroeder is the 19-year-old son of a tennis pro in Palm Springs. A bright, energetic kid, he was working the night shift at Winchell's Donuts when he decided to join the CCC. "When I told my friends I was joining the Corps, they said to me, 'You're crazy, man. You'll have to work your tail off." Schroeder laughs. "They didn't understand. That's what I wanted to do."

The organization's motto is "Hard Work, Low Pay, Miserable Conditions." It teaches skills no more exalted than proper use of an ax and shovel. It pays minimum wage for backbreaking work. But with a waiting list of applicants, and nearly unanimous praise from the legislators who fund it, the California Con

Jeannie Ruck, 21, hauling logs from clogged creek bed, understands meaning of the CCC equal-work rule.

A 1940 enrollee in original Civilian Conservation Corps cuts through rock to build trail still in use today.

servation Corps is obviously doing something right. The name intentionally evokes the original Civilian Conservation Corps which employed 2.5 million men at the height of the Depression from 1933 until 1942. Fifty years ago this month the first enrollees in "Roosevelt's Tree Army" started work that would soon affect the land, forests and waterways of every state and territory of the nation. With up to 15 million people unemployed and America in dire need of land conservation programs, the CCC enjoyed tremendous popularity. The men lived in 4,000 camps and earned $30 a month out of which about $25 was sent home.

There are few testimonials given now to the work they accomplished, but in nine years the original CCC planted more than two billion trees, constructed thousands of miles of trails and access roads and spent 6.5 million days fighting forest fires, with annual losses dropping to their lowest point ever. In a typical year enrollees laid 44,750 miles of telephone lines, maintained 62,920 miles of trails and built 420,000 dams. They built trails in the Grand Canyon, the paths along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and much of the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from Canada to Mexico. One enrollee, Earl Kidd, summed it up when he wrote, "The CCC has given... faith that restores belief in

Photographs by Liane Enkelis

California's hard-working Corps

Friends and family left behind, his future uncertain, recruit Jerry Simmons faces his first day with CCC.

one's physical, mental and spiritual self, in [one's] associates and in the future."

This year Congress is pushing a new youth employment bill that would commit $300 million a year, through 1989, to the American Conservation Corps. With social conditions today similar for many to those of the '30s, it is worth examining the California Conservation Corps to see how-and how well-it works.

In addition to fighting 200 blazes yearly, Corps members grow close to three million trees from seed and plant them each spring. They clear streams, build trails, construct parks, restore landmarks, and do much the same work as the original CCC. Some specialize in newer alternative-energy projects such as building solar hot-water systems.

For their Herculean labors, the 1,800 members of the Corps receive in return Spartan quarters in residential camps and a daily regimen that starts with a two-mile run at 6 A.M. Out of their salary of $581 a month, they pay back $145 for room and board. Women make up more than a third of the Corps, and everyone does the same work and wears the same uniform of high-topped boots, cotton pants, tan shirt and hard hat.

This "ecological militia" operates out of 26 centers, each with its residents on call for emergencies 24 hours a day. A ragtag collection that includes recycled hospitals and fire stations, these centers also occupy an old naval barracks on San Francisco's Treasure Island and a former nudist colony near San Diego, but most of them are located out in the deserts and mountains. Strung 1,000 miles between the borders of Oregon and Mexico, these CCC camps have their quirks and specialities, but they also share a common identity. They are neat, if not spiffy. Work is the order of the day, but morale is high. Food is plentiful and competition friendly in the after-dinner games of Hacky Sack (a kick-ball game) or horseshoes.

The hardest work and the best food

There is spirited rivalry among the camps. The fire fighters, sleeping several to a room and on constant alert, claim to have the hardest assignment-disputed by Corps members on "spike" (a term used by loggers meaning "temporary camp") in the desert or engaged in clearing logjams out of streams. Both the energy | conservation crews and the "solar gypsies"-so named because they live and work out of six converted busesvie for recognition as the "Einsteins" of the Corps. As for the best cuisine, Placer Fire Center offers tasty vegetables from the garden, and San Francisco does well by Asian foods. But everyone knowledgeable in the matter agrees that you can't beat Nadine Azevedo's homemade tortillas and salsa verde at Yosemite.

Uniforms are optional after a nine-hour workday,