The Civilian Conservation Corps played an important role in the establishment and early growth of Tennessee's state parks, providing significant design and construction help to fifteen of the first twenty-five parks, while eight parks were designated on land controlled by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Tennessee's first CCC Company began in 1933 at Camp Cordell Hull near Limestone Cave in Unicoi County, and within a year the state had eleven district headquarters, fifteen branch offices, and thirty companies, with the number of companies peaking at forty-six in 1937. Initial enrollees, ages seventeen to twenty-eight, signed up for at least six months and had to show they were unmarried, unemployed for at least two months, and lacked comparable opportunities for education or training. Of the seventy thousand Tennesseans who enlisted, few served more than one or two years, and the state's motto, "Select, rather than collect," reflected the high honor associated with participation. Established in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Emergency Conservation Work Program to combat Great Depression unemployment, the agency was renamed the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937. During its nine-year existence, it employed more than three million young men, and Congress expanded enlistment to include African Americans, Native Americans, and World War I veterans. Enrollees carried out conservation work including reforestation, soil conservation, road construction, flood and fire control, and agricultural management, while receiving thirty dollars a month along with food, clothing, shelter, education, vocational training, and health care.