History

In 2021, the Utah State Legislature created Utahraptor State Park, located roughly 15 miles northwest of Moab in Grand County. This new state park contains the Dalton Wells Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Moab Citizen Isolation Center Historic Site, and protects important paleontological resources from the early Cretaceous period (125 million years ago).

Dalton Wells CCC Camp

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) on April 5, 1933, when he signed the “Emergency Conservation Work Act.” Construction of the Dalton Wells CCC camp started during the summer of 1935. By November 1st, the camp’s first full contingent of 200 enrollees had arrived. Army Officers and Local Experienced Men (LEMs), supervised the camp and taught the participants discipline, life, and work skills. All told, over 2,000 young men, mostly from eastern states, came to the Dalton Wells Camp for six month commitments. They worked on various range improvement projects including building reservoirs, ditches, watering troughs, and erosion check dams. In their free time they took classes in a wide variety of topics such as auto mechanics, photography, drama, and manners. They boxed and played ping pong, billiards, and league basketball and baseball. They hiked and camped and went to dances and movies in Moab. The camp remained in operation until the end of November 1941.

Moab Citizen Isolation Center

Some people incarcerated in Japanese American concentration camps made a point of protesting the U.S. government’s violation of their civil rights and other injustices they witnessed. One such protest erupted at the Manzanar Concentration Camp in California on December 5, 1942, when, without concrete evidence, camp authorities arrested kitchen worker and labor organizer Harry Ueno for an attack on another camp incarceree. Thousands turned out in support of Ueno and a negotiating team, led by businessman and scholar Joseph Kurihara, tried to obtain his release. Soldiers fired live rounds into the crowd, wounding 11 people. Two young men died of their injuries. Camp officials blamed the negotiating committee and other protestors for the incident and sent them to jails away from camp for more than a month.

As a next step, government administrators decided to create a special camp to isolate “troublemakers” from their families, friends, and associates. They chose the empty Dalton Wells CCC Camp for this purpose. Sixteen men accused of inciting the violence at Manzanar arrived at the hurriedly-created Moab Citizen Isolation Center on January 11, 1943. Government authorities from Gila River, Tule Lake, and Manzanar concentration camps sent 38 additional men they labeled as “agitators” to the Isolation Center over the next several months. The WRA incarcerated a total of 54 men at this site, 50 of whom were U.S. citizens, without benefit of trial or due process. The Moab Citizen Isolation Center shut down on April 24, 1943, when authorities transferred all men to a new Isolation Center located at the old Leupp Boarding School on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.