Once the area that would later become Chester Blandford State Forest was stripped of all of its natural resources, lumber companies sold the land to the state of Massachusetts in the early 1920s. Massachusetts officially established it as Chester Blandford State Forest in 1924. The region laid largely disused until the late 1930s when Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), under President Roosevelt’s New Deal program, flocked to the park. CCC constructed a campground, pavilions, and lean-tos, and blazed trails, and built bridges and roads. They also replanted tens of thousands of trees. As a result of their efforts, native wildlife slowly returned to these woods over the subsequent years.