The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a government work relief program in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men between the ages of 17 and 28, which ran from 1933 to 1942. One of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs to address high unemployment during the Great Depression, the CCC supplied manual labor jobs to hundreds of thousands of young men across the country each year. Enrollees were organized into companies of about 200 men, where they performed environmental conservation work and developed infrastructure for government-owned rural land and parks. Participants were hired in six-month enlistments and worked forty hours per week, with meals and housing provided in military style camps. CCC workers earned $30 a month, with $5 to keep and a compulsory allotment of $25 sent directly to a family dependent. The CCC did not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or political affiliation; however, crews were racially segregated.

In the Chattanooga, Tennessee area, CCC camps were supervised by the National Park Service, which had assumed administration of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 1933. Two Black companies stationed at Camps MP-1 and MP-1 at the Chickamauga Park in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia were engaged in repairing roads, landscaping, and addressing erosion in the woods and fields of the former battlefield site. On Lookout Mountain, Camp MP-5 (Camp Adolph Ochs) and MP-6 (Camp Demaray) hosted two white companies who made improvements to the National Park sites of Point Park and Craven’s House, and to Chattanooga-Lookout Mountain Park, a privately-managed park encompassing approximately 3000 acres of land across the eastern and western slopes of the mountain. Founded in 1925 by newspaper publisher Adolph S. Ochs and other local investors, Chattanooga-Lookout Mountain Park was a privately-funded venture to purchase land on Lookout Mountain to develop into a public recreation area. In 1934, Adolph Ochs, with the assistance of Milton B. Ochs, his brother and vice-president of Chattanooga-Lookout Mountain Park association, formally offered to donate the park to the federal government. The transfer was approved by an act of the United States Congress in 1935, through which Chattanooga-Lookout Mountain Park was absorbed into Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

Between 1933 and 1939, CCC workers on Lookout Mountain cut firebreaks, maintained and improved hiking and riding trails, repaired roads, constructed park infrastructure such as picnic tables and benches, and planted thousands of trees and shrubs. About a dozen CCC workers were also selected to work as history guides and lecturers for visitors at Point Park and at Chickamauga National Military Park. In 1935, Camp MP-2 in Fort Oglethorpe was disbanded, followed in 1937 by MP-5 on Lookout Mountain and MP-1 in Fort Oglethorpe as CCC work projects began to wind down. Camp MP-6 remained on the western slope of Lookout Mountain until 1939 when it was closed due to insufficient work. CCC projects continued in East Tennessee and throughout the country, and in 1941, another camp, NP-4, was briefly opened on Lookout Mountain to continue fire protection work under the supervision of the National Park Service until its closure in 1942.

"Gift of Chattanooga-Lookout Park Held "Generous Offer" by Congress." Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Mar. 25, 1934.

"Lookout Park Proffered to Federal Government; Civic Leaders Prais Act." Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Jan. 21, 1934.

"Tennessee, Chattanooga Profit Most by Mighty, Expanding C.C.C. Program; Famous Park System Virtually Remade, Seen by 25 Per Cent. More Tourists." Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Jun. 23, 1935.

Paige, John C. and Jerome A. Greene. "Administrative History of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park." Denver, CO: United States Department of the Interior National Park Service, 1983. Accessed March 27, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/chch/adhit.htm.

Brock Candy Company was a Chattanooga-based confectionery manufacturing company that operated independently from 1906 to 1995, and as a subsidiary until 2014. William Emerson Brock, born in North Carolina, was a traveling tobacco salesman for R.J. Reynold Tobacco Company, who in 1906 bought Trigg Candy Company, a small wholesale grocery and candy shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Brock reincorporated the candy manufacturing operation in 1909, changing the name to Brock Candy Company. Brock Candy continued Trigg Candy Company’s production of penny candies and bulk candies, such as peanut brittle, peppermints, and fudge.

In the 1920s, the company moved away from producing slab confectionery items and concentrated on developing new jelly and marshmallow candies with the installation of automated starch mogul equipment at the plant. A starch mogul system is a method for molding softer candies in trays of starch powder. In this decade of plant modernization, Brock Candy also became one of the first to package its products in cellophane bags.

While serving as president of Brock Candy, William E. Brock also engaged in business in banking and insurance, and served for many decades as a trustee of the University of Chattanooga. Brock was appointed to fill the seat left vacant in the United States Senate following the death of Senator Lawrence D. Tyson in 1929 and was subsequently elected to serve the remainder of the late senator’s term until 1931. During Brock’s term as Senator, his son William E. Brock Jr. succeeded him as the president of Brock Candy Company.

The company introduced Chocolate Covered Cherries in the 1930s, a confection that became one of the company’s best selling products. With the institution of sugar rationing during World War II, Brock Candy was forced to cut back much of its usual production and adapt to producing candies with ingredients that were still abundantly available, such as corn syrup and peanuts. As a result of these adaptations, the company introduced another one of its signature products, the Brock Bar, a chocolate-coated, peanut and caramel roll.

Brock Candy grew its operations throughout the second half of the 20th century, beginning in 1950 when the company added a new 60,000 square foot wing to the plant on Chestnut Street in downtown Chattanooga. In the 1960s, the company expanded again, building a new distribution warehouse on Jersey Pike outside the city and acquiring Schuler Chocolates of Winona, Minnesota. By the mid-1970s, the company moved its headquarters from the Chestnut Street plant to its campus on Jersey Pike, adding a production warehouse and office facilities. In 1981, Brock Candy was one of the first American companies to produce European-style gummy candies, and began introducing more fruit-based snacks and candies. In the early 1990s, Brock Candy acquired Shelly Brothers, Inc. of Souderton, Pennsylvania and a share of Clara Candy of Dublin, Ireland, before going public in 1993. A year later, in 1994, Brock Candy was acquired by Chicago-based company Brach Confections.

Production of jelly candies and fruit snacks continued at the Chattanooga plant on Jersey Pike for the next two decades. The company was sold to Farley's & Sathers Candy Company in 2007, and merged with Ferrara Candy Company in 2012. In 2014, Ferrara Candy closed the Jersey Pike production plant, ending 108 years of Brock Candy production in Chattanooga.

"Brock, William Emerson." Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. United States Congress. Accessed September 11, 2023, https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/B000850.

Cohen, M. L. "Brach and Brock Confections, Inc." In International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 15, edited by Tina Grant, 63-65. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996.

Mielnick, Tara Mitchell. "Brock Candy Company." Tennessee Encyclopedia. Tennessee Historical Society, revised March 1, 2018. Accessed September 11, 2023, http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/brock-sandy-company/.

Pare, Mark. "Sweet Sorrow: Company Closing 108-Year-Old Chattanooga Candy Plant." Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), Sept. 23, 2014. Accessed Aug. 31, 2023, https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2014/sep/23/sweet-sorrow-company-closing-108-year-old-chattano/.

Reynolds, Terry. "Remembering Brock Candy." Chattanoogan.com, March 29, 2018. Accessed September 11, 2023, https://www.chattanoogan.com/2018/3/29/365955/Remembering-Brock-Candy.aspx.