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.