Ivar Nelson and Patricia Hart will present “The CCC in Idaho: Building Our State While Supporting People in Hard Times” at the Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave., Thursday, Sept. 8, at 7 p.m. The Civilian Conservation Corps, an integral part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, was a public relief work program that operated in the U.S. from 1933 to 1942. Designed to create jobs for young men during the Great Depression, it also developed a workforce to conserve and develop natural resources in rural government-owned lands. In Idaho, it not only changed the lives of the workers, but made a mark on the vitality of the state’s economy and society.

The presentation will show how the legacy of the CCC reflects not only the history of the Great Depression, but sheds light on the very contemporary issues of fighting wildfires, use of federal land, and national service.

The lecture is part of a project to bring CCC images online through the University of Idaho Library’s Digital Collections. The Museum of North Idaho loaned more than 500 CCC photographs for the project at /www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital.

This program is made possible by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, the state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, with local support from the Friends of the Library.

• Patricia Hart is a social and cultural historian with a focus on change in times of national crisis and the role of media in that process. Her most recent book, “A Home for Every Child” (University of Washington Press), addresses the 19th century origins and practice of non-relative adoption in the United States. Previous books include the edited “Women Writing Women” (University of Nebraska Press) and, with Ivar Nelson, “Mining Town: The Photographic Collection of T.N. Barnard and Nellie Stockbridge” (University of Washington Press).

• Ivar Nelson was born on the Mississippi River in Keokuk, Iowa; raised in St. Louis; studied at Harvard and Uppsala University (Sweden); volunteered for the Peace Corps in Kenya and worked for the State Department. He founded Bookpeople of Moscow and is delighted it continues after 40 years under its present new ownership. A book publisher, he directed Solstice Press, the University of Idaho Press and Eastern Washington University Press. With Patricia Hart he is the author of “Mining Town.” He volunteers his time when not working on the CCC project working with the Kenworthy Theater, Palouse Pathways and the Latah County Library Board.