Private landowners and farmers purchased a large swath of sandy dunes with the hopes of turning the land into farms during the early 1900s. However, due to the sandy soil and poor management of the already-thin topsoil, the efforts were unsuccessful. The state of North Carolina purchased the land from desperate farmers during the height of the Great Depression and set it aside as a National Wildlife Refuge in 1939. The Civilian Conservation Corps, operating under President Roosevelt’s New Deal program, paved several miles of roads and nurtured fragile plants and grasses to restore the original habitat. Thanks to the organization’s efforts, Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge is a thriving dune biodome in South Carolina.