WPA Waterways!

(WPA workers constructing Pier 8 in Baltimore, Maryland, during May of 1936. Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.)

From 1935 to 1943, WPA workers across the country constructed 193 miles of jetties & breakwaters, built 169 miles of bulkhead, improved 4,400 miles of river bank & shoreline, and laid down 17 million square yards of riprap.

(The WPA helped widen the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal in 1935. The widening would prove useful to the war effort, as ships were able to avoid much of the Atlantic Ocean--and thus potential U-Boat attack--when traveling to or from Baltimore. Photo by Brent McKee.)