The historic buildings at Walhalla State Fish Hatchery were created through the Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs that provided jobs to unemployed Americans and helped launch a conservation and resource management movement that set the stage for today's state and national park systems. The Civilian Conservation Corps created and improved many parks and recreational areas, supported soil and wildlife conservation, and constructed 16 South Carolina state parks during the 1930s, including nearby Table Rock State Park, with its rustic lodge, cabins, dam, and spillway that formed Pinnacle Lake, and Oconee State Park, with cabins, picnic shelters, and a bathhouse from the same period. This 1930s trout hatchery is South Carolina's only cold-water hatchery, where the state's Department of Natural Resources raises trout to stock mountain streams, supporting the long-term survival of these species and providing recreational fishing opportunities. The hatchery contains incubators and growing tanks for small fish, and the three species still cultured here are brook trout, rainbow trout, and Loch Leven trout, now referred to as brown trout.