Editor's note: This is "The County Line," the first of a new regular feature of the Star Tribune's Sunday Washington County edition. The aim is to cast a spotlight on places, events and people that make — and have made — Washington County a special place to live.

The small patch of well-kept green sandwiched between a McDonald's restaurant and a tire shop set amid a bustling commercial district in Cottage Grove might be a peculiar spot for a cemetery.

But it is one of the city's most historic spots, and links Cottage Grove to one of the largest and best-known candy companies in the world.

Members of the Mars family — yes, that Mars family, of Snickers, 3 Musketeers and M&M's fame — were among the early settlers of the Newport/Cottage Grove area. Their Minnesota roots led to the invention of the Milky Way in Minneapolis before the company grew into a $30-billion-a-year candy colossus.

Atkinson Cemetery, established in 1874 in Cottage Grove, had been forgotten and abandoned for 60 years by the time the area around it was developed in the early 1970s, so overgrown that nobody knew it was there.

Once it was rediscovered, the city — joined by families and the local Lions Club — began major restoration work. Most of the vegetation, save for a majestic oak tree, was removed. Grave markers were replaced, but after years of vandalism and lost records, it's not certain that gravestones were put back in their original spots.

Franklin Clarence Mars

The effort was aided by the late Forrest Mars Sr., then-head of the giant candy company, who had a large granite monument to the Mars family placed there as a tribute.

The Marses were a prominent family in Cottage Grove and the surrounding area. Many of the family members listed on the monument are buried in nearby Cottage Grove Cemetery, although there is no solid evidence that any are buried in Atkinson Cemetery, according to E. Katie Holm, a Minneapolis writer and photographer who has researched the site.

According to an early history of Washington County, Hartley Mars arrived in Cottage Grove in the fall of 1865. A Pennsylvania native who served with the Wisconsin infantry in the Civil War, he was joined by his brother John, whose grandson Franklin later founded the candy company.

Franklin Mars was born around 1883 in Hancock, Minn., according to the company's official history. He had polio as a young boy, so his mother kept him entertained by teaching him to hand-dip chocolates, setting him on a prosperous career path.

By 1920, after having moved to the West Coast and failed in his first candy-making venture before finding success with buttercreams, he and his wife moved back to Minneapolis and set up a company called Mar-O-Bar after his new creation.

Mar-O-Bar proved too fragile to withstand transportation. After three years of research, however, he struck on the recipe for the Milky Way, "A Chocolate Malted in a Candy Bar," which became an instant success.

By the end of the decade, the company had relocated to Chicago and its central rail transportation hub. Snickers was added in 1930, followed by 3 Musketeers two years later.

After Franklin died (and was buried in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis), his son Forrest Sr. took over the company. He carried on its inventive tradition: he and business partner Bruce Murrie created M & M's in 1941, which became the biggest initials in the candy world.

Jim Anderson • jeanderson@startribune.com