This critical five-mile road connected Cumberland Mountain to the river valleys of the Paint Rock and the Tennessee. Its construction, a feat of engineering and determination, was part of a New Deal-era project to aid Jackson County residents left unemployed and destitute by the effects of the Great Depression. Probate Judge James Morgan Money, chair of the Jackson County Relief Committee, envisioned the project. Five thousand people, all on the county's relief rolls, applied for jobs on the road project, and 3,500 were hired. Construction began in March 1933. The men were paid a dollar each day, and no employee could work more than two ten-hour days per week, enabling the hiring of more workers. County leaders and local residents aided the project. Judge Money purchased boots for the workers, and Hal Cunningham, a farmer who lived near the base of Cumberland Mountain, supplied sweet potatoes to feed the men. One thousand people attended the November 1, 1933 opening ceremony. The road's completion made possible the 1934 creation of the 18,000-acre Cumberland Mountain Farms Project, later known as Skyline Farms, an experimental farming community of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. In operation until 1945, the farm left a legacy of self-reliance.