CCC Company 850
Mesquite, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During the Great Depression, Hicks Jobson set aside eight acres of his farm to allow the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal work relief programs, to establish a local camp. Located 1/4 mile east of Mesquite, Company 850 welcomed 250 enrollees in June 1935. The site included 24 barracks, a mess hall, health facility, bath house and recreation hall. Under Project SCS-36-T, the men worked on soil conservation and engaged more than 300 farmers in Dallas and surrounding counties on over 40,000 acres until 1941. Work included terracing, fencing, check dams and levees along the east fork of the Trinity River. The camp land was later donated to Mesquite ISD.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During the Great Depression, farmer Hicks Jobson set aside eight acres near Mesquite so the Civilian Conservation Corps — one of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal work-relief programs — could establish a camp. From June 1935, Company 850's 250 enrollees lived in a small city of barracks, a mess hall, and a bath house while working with more than 300 area farmers on soil conservation across 40,000 acres. Their terracing, fencing, check dams, and levees along the Trinity River continued until 1941, after which the land was donated to the local school district.
Why it matters
The CCC put a generation of jobless young men to work healing the land, and camps like this one left a lasting mark on both the American countryside and the New Deal's promise of dignity through work.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the depths of the Great Depression, the American countryside was in trouble on two fronts at once. Millions of young men could find no work, and the land itself — over-plowed, over-grazed, and stripped of cover — was washing and blowing away. It was the era of the Dust Bowl and of ruined farms, when the health of the soil and the fate of a generation of jobless workers had become the same crisis.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal answered with a burst of work-relief programs, and among the most beloved was the Civilian Conservation Corps. The idea was elegant: put unemployed young men to work repairing the natural landscape, pay them a wage most of which went home to their families, and give them structure, food, and purpose in the bargain. Camps sprang up across the nation, small temporary towns of barracks and mess halls dedicated to healing the land.
Near Mesquite, in Dallas County, that national program touched down on eight acres of one man's farm. The scene the marker describes — soil conservation work spreading across tens of thousands of acres of North Texas farmland — is a local snapshot of a country trying, all at once, to rescue both its people and its ground.
People & events
It began with a gift of land. During the Depression, a farmer named Hicks Jobson set aside eight acres of his farm, a quarter mile east of Mesquite, so the CCC could establish a camp there. In June 1935, Company 850 arrived — 250 enrollees who moved into a purpose-built compound of 24 barracks, a mess hall, a health facility, a bath house, and a recreation hall. It was, in effect, a small planned community that had not existed months before.
Their assignment, designated Project SCS-36-T, was soil conservation, and the marker is refreshingly specific about the labor. The men engaged more than 300 farmers across Dallas and surrounding counties, working over 40,000 acres. They built terraces to slow erosion on sloping fields, strung fencing, and constructed check dams and levees along the east fork of the Trinity River to control the water that had been carrying good topsoil away.
The camp did this work until 1941, when the approach of a very different national emergency drew the country's young men elsewhere and the CCC wound down. The story has a fitting final chapter: the camp land was later donated to Mesquite ISD, so ground that had trained a workforce and healed the countryside was handed to the next generation for its schools.
Its place in the American story
Company 850 is one small node in one of the most successful and fondly remembered federal programs in American history. Across the country, CCC enrollees planted billions of trees, fought erosion, built trails and shelters, and left a physical legacy on the land that endures to this day. This camp's terraces, dams, and levees along the Trinity were part of that vast national effort to teach the country how to farm without destroying the soil beneath it.
Just as importantly, the CCC embodied a New Deal idea that still resonates: that the government could restore not only landscapes but people — that work with dignity, decent food, and a paycheck sent home could carry a young man and his family through the worst economic collapse the nation had known. The 250 men of Company 850 were living proof of that bargain.
And the arc from CCC camp to school district is quietly emblematic of how the New Deal wove itself into ordinary American communities. Land given by a single farmer became a federal work camp, and then became public schools. The program was temporary; its imprint on the land, the institutions, and the memory of a place was not.
If you visit
There is no grand structure to tour here — the barracks and mess hall of a CCC camp were never meant to be permanent — so this is a place for the historical imagination. Standing near the site a quarter mile east of Mesquite, picture the small city of 24 barracks that housed 250 young men from 1935, the smoke from the mess hall, the trucks heading out each morning to farms across the county.
The real monument is written across the wider landscape rather than at any single point. As you travel this part of North Texas, look toward the east fork of the Trinity River and think about the check dams and levees built to tame it, and the terraced fields meant to hold their soil in place. Much of the conservation work the CCC pioneered became simply the way land was cared for, so its legacy is hidden in plain sight.
There's a satisfying symmetry to end on: the camp land became part of Mesquite ISD. So this is a good stop for anyone interested in how the Depression and the New Deal reached into everyday American communities — a place where a program to save the land quietly became a place to educate the children of the people it helped.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Hicks Jobson
- · Franklin D. Roosevelt
Related events
- · Great Depression
- · New Deal
- · Civilian Conservation Corps
Themes & tags
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