The Highlands Archives Since 1904: Oldest Camp West of the Alleghenies
 
There are approximately 12,000 summer camps in the United states. Below is a list of the oldest camps (Highlands is the 8th oldest private camp in America). As the Archives' tagline says, Highlands is the oldest private camp west of the Alleghenies. We put the YMCA and boy/girl scout camps in their own category as they are very different on a number of fronts - a key difference being they are most commonly short term - 1 to 2 weeks. Going to summer camp for one week is far better than not going at all. But going for a month, or even better the whole summer, changes everything! A great private camp is like a large family; boys come summer after summer, fathers are followed by sons, grandsons, and great grandsons. Camp becomes a home away from home - a favored home, even! The season at Highlands was originally 12 weeks!! Then it was 10, then 8, and now 7. We wish more boys would come for 7 weeks!! Boys who come full term and then stay on for Friends and Family can push their time spent on the CH peninsula out to a fairly long 8 week season. And parents, the Highlands Lodge is THE way to visit! Highlands is a byproduct of Standard Oil riches. The Rockefeller family endowed the University of Chicago and in doing so put the pieces in place for John Dewey's Laboratory Schools. It was the parents of the boys in the Lab Schools (elementary, middle, high) who persuaded our founder, Lab Schools principal Harry Orrin Gillet, to found Camp Highlands. Simply put, Highlands would not exist if John D. Rockefeller had not written an $80,000,000 check to help create the University of Chicago. Interestingly, it was fellow Plum Lake summer resident Thomas Goodspeed (Goodspeed Island) who did most of the persuading! Thank you, Thomas! Read more on this on the All About Judge Hook and Hook's Point article in the Archives Magazine. Certainly, the Hyde Park neighborhood would not have become what it is today without the University. The community was affluent enough to spawn a private summer camp for boys - a privilege to this day, but much more so at the dawn of the 20th century. Going to camp in 1904 costed almost as much as the average family made in a year! This is the same as camp costing around $48,000 in 2010. Can you imagine? There is a detailed history of camping in America below this list. As you can see, many of the early camps are no longer... THE OLDEST CAMPS IN AMERICA 1881: Camp Chocorua is founded by Ernest Balch, a sophomore at Dartmouth College. Squam Lake, Holderness, New Hampshire. Chocorua runs until 1889. 1882: Camp Harvard is founded by William Ford Nichols. Stow, Massachusetts. Nichols sells the camp to Winthrop Talbot, in 1884. Camp is moved to Squam Lake, near Camp Chocurua. Name is changed to Camp Asquam. The camp only lasts ten years due to Talbot's health. "On Golden Pond" is later filmed on Squam Lake. 1885: Sumner Dudley, a New York businessman, borrows a tent, rents a boat, and invites seven boys from Newburgh, New York, who belonged to the YMCA, on a camping trip to Pine Point on Orange Lake, about six miles away. He does this for the next six years with no recognition from the YMCA. In 1891, he purchases land on Lake Champlain two miles from Westport, CT and establishes the camp there permanently. The camp is recognized by the YMCA. In 1903 the camp is posthumously named Camp Dudley. By the turn of the century there are more than 20 YMCA camps in the northeast and one, Phantom Lake, in Wisconsin. Camp Dudley is the oldest camp in the United States. 1886: Camp Algonquin is established by Edwin DeMerritte, a Dartmouth graduate and principal of Berkely Preparatory School. Also on Squam Lake. Algonquin closes in 1929. 1890: Camp Arey on Lake Canandaigua in New York is established by a university professor. It begins as a natural science camp for boys and for the first two years was named Camp Arey Science Camp. It had the greater distinction, however, of being the first camp to have a summer session reserved just for girls, and it served them exclusively beginning in 1902. Camp Arey closes circa 1980. 1891: Camp Idlewild is established in N.H. Closes in the '70s. 1895: #1 Camp Pasquaney is established on Newfound Lake, near Bridgewater, New Hampshire. Founder Dr. Edward S. Wilson is an alumnus of Camp Asquam. Pasquaney is still in existence, and as far as we know is the oldest private camp in the United States. 1896: #2 Camp Choconut in Friendsville, PA. 1896: Camp Marienfeld in Chesham, New Hampshire is established. Camp closes in the 1950s. 1898: Camp Altamont in the Arirondacks becomes the first full girls camp. Closed but not sure when. 1899: #3 Camp Greenbrier in Alderson, West Virginia 1899: Camp Webb in Walling, TN. Closed but not sure when. 1900: Mrs. Oscar Holt starts Redcroft, a camp for girls, on Newfound Lake near Hebron, New Hampshire. Closed but not sure when. 1902: Laura I. Mattoon, a teacher in a private school in New York City, establishes Camp Kehonka for girls in Wolfeboro on the east side of Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H. Closes in 1985. 1902: #4 Wyonegonic Camp for girls established in Bridgeton, Maine. Wyonegonic is the oldest girls camp in the U.S. 1902: Pinelands for Girls is established at Center Harbor,New Hampshire by Ms. Munoz. Closed but not sure when. 1903: #5 Camp Tecumseh established in N.H. on Lake Winnipesaukee. 1903: #6 Camp Wachusett established in Vermont on Lake Hortonia. 1903: Camp Belknap for boys, a YMCA Camp for boys is established on Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H. 1903: #7 Camp Mowglis for boys is established on Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H. 1904: #8 Camp Highlands is founded and has its first season. 1904: Camp Minocqua is founded by Chicago Latin School instructor Dr. John Sprague. 1905: Camp Minocqua has its first season. Closes in 1973. 1905: #9 Camp Aloha for girls is established on Lake Morey, Vermont. Camp Highlands would like to thank Timothy Bawden for what follows. When the Highlands Archives asked Tim for permission to reprint excerpts from his excellent 2001 dissertation, he agreed without hesitation. What follows are excerpts from his work: Reinventing the Frontier: Tourism, Nature, and Environmental Change in Northern Wisconsin, 1880 - 1930. This was work done for a Doctorate in Philosophy (Geography) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Chapter 6 is dedicated to and titled "Summer Camp". Not only does the chapter elegantly lace together the various people and events that make up the genesis of the camping movement in America, it concisely illuminates the movement's place in northern Wisconsin. Dr. Bawden draws from many sources - too many to list here - but chief among them are: A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey, by Porter Sargent, 1935; History of Organized Camping: The First 100 Years, by Eleanor Eels, 1986; The Chief: Ernest Thompson Seton and the Changing West, 1986; Ernest Thompson Seton: Man in Nature and the Progressive Era, 1880 - 1915; our very own Camp Highlands Dinglebat; The Dewey School: The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago, 1896 - 1903, by Katherine Camp Mayhew and Anna Camp Edwards; Clearwater Camp for Girls: The First Sixty Years. The pictures within this Archives page are those of Camp Highlands. No other institution appropriated the frontier narrative like the summer camp and outdoor youth movement that began in the late nineteenth century and flourished during the first several decades of the twentieth century. Several different types of organized camps emerged, including private camps, agency or institutional camps, and public camps. The private summer camp - the first, most common, and focus of this chapter - played a role similar to the resort: it was a retreat from the city for the children of society's elite. Private camps promoted healthy, outdoor living for children as an antidote to the real and imagined environmental conditions of city living. They also served the more pragmatic goal of occupying a child with recreation during the idle summer months, which in turn allowed adults to be free of parenting duties for two or more months out of the year. The summer recess was a cultural remnant of a time when practically all of the population lived in rural areas and children needed to help with farm work. It was a lingering vestige of America's agrarian roots that was not necessary in modern, urban society. Yet summer camps were more than places of recreation, they were educational institutions as well. "The organized summer camp", Harvard President Charles Eliot told the National Association of Directors of Girls' Camp in 1922, was "the most important step in education that America has given the world." They provided children with opportunities to engage in activities that could not be done in city classrooms. Children in summer camps learned skills, gained knowledge, and lived cooperatively with other children over periods far longer than just a school day. In particular, they learned about the natural environment and how to adapt to it through performing activities from America's frontier and pioneer past, sometimes adopting the roles of Native Americans, pioneers, voyageurs, and others who were perceived as virtuous and resourceful. Porter Sargent, author of an annual survey of summer camps, wrote "the summer camp marks, too, a turning back toward the sturdier training of our forbears under more primitive conditions on the farm or the frontier. But it is more than this - more than a protest - more than a reversion. It is a distinctive education movement. As worked out by its best exponents the summer camp is one of the most notable achievements of America in educational progress." Summer camps were also seen as a path to social reform. Promoting democracy and equality through work and play was a primary goal for many of the early establishments. Idealistically, class boundaries were supposed to melt away as children of different backgrounds met on even terms. Their status became defined by traits such as courage and generosity, rather than the accumulation of material things. A pair of researchers looking into the role of play and recreation near the middle part of the century commented: Chiefly, there is but one role for children's camping in America - to prepare people to live acceptably, successfully, and joyfully in a democracy. Camping is an instrument of the society it serves. The camp, operating according to democratic principles, has a potentiality for training for democracy that cannot be matched by any other agency, for it gives the child the opportunity actually to live the democratic life day and night in a little democracy of which he/she is a vital part. [Allen V. Sapora and Elmer D. Mitchell. The Theory of Play and Recreation, 1961] The irony here is that the camps in many ways encouraged just the opposite effect. Children were taken out of the city, where children of different social and economic status met in public places on a daily basis, to a place where they interacted only with children from other elite families. Hence, private summer camps encouraged children to identify with, and reinforced their status within, a group of peers who were from similar social and economic backgrounds. It was, in fact, one of the institutions responsible for reproducing an elite class in society. The summer camp evolved from a small order of pioneer camps and trailblazers in New England to become a mass phenomenon that spread throughout the nation. By 1890 there were just two organized private camps. In 1900 the number had grown to about twenty and as many more YMCA camps, almost all of which were located in New England. By 1910 their numbers mushroomed to about 150 private camps, as the movement cracked the Midwest, the West and parts of the South. In addition, almost a third of the camps by this time were for girls. Girls camps, which generally provided the same activities as boys camps, were part of a larger movement that gradually loosened the social straightjacket placed upon young, upper class women in Victorian times, reaching its climax in America with the 1920 ratification of the nineteenth amendment. In that year the number of camps grew to nearly 500 and almost half of them were for girls. The 1920s marked the most rapid growth as the total number of camps swelled to 2,776, of which 1346 were private. The largest groups of agency or institutional camps consisted of the Boy Scouts with nearly 500 camps, the Girl Scouts with 323, the YMCA with 415, and the Camp Fire Girls with 101. [Porter Sargent. A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey, 1935] The large increase in organizational camps during this time signified a broader democratization of the movement to include the middle classes. Northern Wisconsin became the epicenter of the summer camp movement in the Midwest. This was due to its location relative to Chicago and that city's burgeoning wealthy classes, the more primitive conditions that existed in northern Wisconsin resulting from failed attempts to convert the region to an agricultural hinterland, and, of course, the great number of lakes. The first two summer camps in the Midwest, Camp Highlands and Camp Minocqua, were near Sayner and Minocqua, respectively, in 1904. [Camp Minocqua was 'founded' in 1904, and had its first summer in 1905.] Only a handful more were established during the next 15 years. But after World War I, summer camps sprang up throughout the region. By 1929 Wisconsin had more primitive camps than any other state west of the Appalachians, and was ranked ninth in the country. This chapter examines the evolution of the organized summer camp as an American institution and development in northern Wisconsin within the larger context of the outdoor youth movement that emerged in this country in the early decades of the twentieth century. THE GENESIS OF SUMMER CAMP In August of 1861, Frederick William Gunn, headmaster of the Gunnery School in Washington, Connecticut, took his entire school of boys on a forty mile hike, or gypsy trip, as it was called, to Welch's Point, on Long Island Sound near New Haven. The early days of the Civil War aroused romantic patriotism in the North, and at a time when the horrors of the war were not well known, young boys were eager to imitate the image they had of the life of a Union soldier, camping out and sleeping in tents. The hike took two days and many of the boys walked the whole way even though two donkeys were brought along to allow them a chance to rest their legs once in a while. The tents, baggage, supplies, and so on, were carried in a large market wagon. When they arrived at the Sound they set up camp on the beach naming it Camp Comfort, and spent two weeks boating, sailing, fishing, and tramping. Gunn's objective was not just recreation, he believed that this sort of outdoor activity strengthened muscle, nerve, and self discipline, and above all, it helped develop the masculine character. This proved to be such a positive educational experience that Gunn brought the boys back in 1863 and 1865. In 1872 he established the Gunnery Camp at Point Beautiful on Lake Waramaug in Washington, Connecticut, seven miles from the school. It operated as a part of the school regime until 1879 when the school joined other schools in adopting the long summer vacation, despite Gunn's apprehension over the extended period of potential idleness of youths. Gunn's experiment marked the beginning of the American institution of summer camp. [Eleanor Eels. History of Organized Camping: The First 100 Years. 1986. Porter Sargent. A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey, 1935] The first attempt at an independent organized private camp came in 1876. In that year Dr. Joseph Rothrock, a botanist and surgeon, established the North Mountain School of Physical Culture in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, 33 miles northeast of Wilkes Barre. Rothrock was a very accomplished man, with a bachelors degree from Harvard and a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, but it was a series of health problems that began when he was a teenager that shaped his ideas for a camp. In an autobiographical sketch, Rothrock wrote: In 1876, I had the happy idea of taking weakly boys in summer for camp life in the woods, and under competent instruction, mingling exercise and study so that the pursuit of health could be combined with the acquisition of practical knowledge outside the usual academic lines. I founded the school on the North Mountain, Luzern County, Pennsylvania, and designated it a School of Physical Culture. There were twelve campers, twelve years of age or older, and five teachers. The campers slept in tents with two boys each, and ate their meals in a tented dining room. Activities included row boating, lasso throwing, swimming, fishing and drawing. Nearly all of the boys brought along rifles that they used for target practice and deer drives later in the season. The session lasted from July to October. Unfortunately, the 1876 experiment did not pay the expenses so Rothrock turned the resort over to two members of his staff and left to explore Alaska. The camp ran for two more seasons before disbanding. [Porter Sargent. A Handbook of Summer Camps] Two years later, in 1880, Reverend George Hinckley established the first religious-based camp for boys on Gardiner's Island, near Wakefield, Rhode Island. Hinckley believed that a powerful way to influence the moral and spiritual character of boys in his parish was through camp life, a combination of religion, recreation, and outdoor living. There were just ten students in camp during that inaugural year on Gardiner's Island and three were students from China living in New England to be educated in American schools. The camp consisted of two or three tents, two rented row boats, and a sail boat. Meals were eaten on a long table built by the campers. The regular daily program included religious observances, story telling, swimming, boating, fishing, and an evening service. Hinckley operated the camp for just two years and then for fourteen years afterwards conducted a summer camp in Maine called the Good Will Boys Encampment. Hinckley's idea for the camp and much of his philosophy about the outdoors came from his mentor. Reverend William H. Murray, popularly known as "Adirondack" Murray. Murrray was born in Guilford, Connecticut in 1840, four miles away from Hinckley's birthplace. He was pastor of the Park Street Church in Boston in 1869 when he published the Adventures in the Wilderness: Or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks, which remains a classic in the Adirondack canon. Murray first came to the Adirondack wilderness in 1866 and began writing up his adventures, which appeared in a local newspaper. The articles became the nucleus for the book. When it was published there was an immediate response. Throngs of tourists, some of them ill-prepared, appeared in the mountains the following season hoping to experience the nature that Murray had described. [Philip G. Terrie. Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Wilderness in the Adirondacks] But its impact fell upon more than tourists: the book inspired a generation of lovers of the Eastern wilderness, which included many of the individuals who established summer camps throughout the region during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Hinckley wrote of his mentor "I have looked upon Adirondack Murray, not as father of the Boys' Summer Camp, but father of the great outdoor movement out of which they sprang. His own camping was for personal recreation only, but without his brilliant descriptions of the glories of the open, I am not sure that the camp movement would have been born when it was..." [Porter Sargent. A Handbook of Summer Camps]  The first organized private camp established specifically for educational purposes opened in 1881, and it had a tremendous impact on the entire summer camp movement that followed. In that year Ernest Balch, a sophomore at Dartmouth College, opened Camp Chocurua on Burnt Island in Squam Lake, New Hampshire. The camp was named for the mountain on the horizon. Only a handful of campers appeared the first season. In March of 1882 he placed an ad in the Churchman under the head "Hotels, Board, etc." with a legend that read, "A Summer Camp for Boys, Camp Chocura, Asquam Lake, Holderness, New Hampshire opens for its second year July 1, 1882. Boys are taught swimming, rowing, and fishing and the practical work of camp life. Parents will find here a healthy happy outdoor life for boys. The best references furnished." It was the first advertisement ever for a summer camp, and parents responded. Camp life was busy, with meals to be cooked over a fire, dishes to be washed in the lake, grounds and quarters to be kept clean, and paths to be cleared. There were athletics, games, water sports, and fishing, and on certain occasions campers had to wear uniforms. There was even a camp paper, the Golden Rod. But Camp Chocurua was about more than just outdoor fun. Among the principal motivations for Balch was a self-proclaimed pity he had for rich kids. He, being a man of modest means, was oddly concerned with "the miserable existence of wealth adolescent boys in the summer when they must accompany their parents to fashionable resorts and fall prey to the evils of life in high society." Balch wrote down objectives for Camp Chocura. It existed for "1) the appreciation of the worthiness of work." To achieve these goals Balch adopted several underlying principles of camp philosophy. First, there should be no servants in the camp: all camp work had to be done by the boys and men. Second, boys had to "master the lake". They were taught to sail, canoe, swim, dive, and do boat work. This was not just for fun, but for learning how to help, cooperate with, and depend on others. Third, and seemingly most important to Balch, was that the boys had to learn how to use money. Each boy was given the same weekly allowance and was paid extra for doing additional work: no money could be sent from home. In later years he commented "practically all of them were sons of well to do people. A few of them were sons of wealth parents and possessed vague conceptions of money and somewhat snobbish tendencies. I designed the camp to be of a really democratic spirit...Have him earn what he needs for his pleasures." [Porter Sargent. A Handbook of Summer Camps] Camp Chocurua was a pioneering camp in many ways. It influenced the camps that followed, either directly or indirectly, with its camp activities, division of work, money system, camp newspaper, regular correspondence with home, inspections, and mystical lore of the camp's origins and surroundings. One of them was Camp Harvard in Stow, Massachusetts. Founded in 1882 by two seminary students, one of whom was William Ford Nichols. Camp Harvard followed Balch's plan and policy closely. When Nichols sold the camp in 1884 to Winthrop Talbot, a student at Harvard and son of the Dean of the Boston University Medical School, it was moved to Squam Lake, New Hampshire, near Camp Chocurua. He changed the name to Camp Asquam, but continued to operate it on the same social principals. Balch criticized it severely, however, because Talbot employed a chef. Balch wrote in 1916 "one idea we adhered to from the beginning to the end of Chocurua was that all work should be done by the men and boys." But Talbot's intentions were good, even if there was a resident chef. He was another in a series of physicians, educators, and social organizers who tried to do something about the problems of society. Ironically, as social reformers like Chicago's Jane Addams worked to correct the ills of society through improving conditions of the impoverished in America's cities, there were a handful like Talbot who believed that some social engineering for those on the other end was also necessary. Talbot believed in democracy and felt that it was the most valuable feature of Camp Asquam. He wrote in 1905, "In camp, poor and rich lads stripped to their swimming trunks are on an absolute equality: the best man wins. Courage, generosity, goodwill, honesty are the touchstones to success in camp." Each day, each boy had a different job which included cleaning boats and the boat house, waiting on tables, policing the camp, sorting and delivering mail, cleaning lamps, and carrying drinking water. [Lewis D. Bement, a company president and early camper at Talbot's camp, recalls his experiences at camp in 1889 in Porter Sargent's A Handbook of Summer Camps.] This was a far different routine than many of the boys were accustomed to back home where servants took care of most of these humbling duties. The democratic camp, Talbot said, smoothed "the rough corners of the embryo aristocrat, the budding of the crude, well-meaning able boy." [As quoted in Eels, History of Organized Camping] While Camp Chocura set the precedent for camps that followed, it was short lived and a financial failure. Camp Asquam, on the other hand, was the first commercially successful summer camp, surviving into the 1910s. A number of its boys and counselors went on to establish or direct their own camps, such as Dr. Edward S. Wilson who in 1895 established Pasquaney on Newfound Lake, near Bridgewater, New Hampshire. Pasquaney carried on Talbot's ideals and was regarded as one of the finest camps in New England well into the twentieth century. There was a museum lecture hall where boys collected and mounted specimens of local area flora and fauna, a theater where the boys gave performances every Saturday night, a library with books on nature and the outdoors, and a work shop for woodcraft. Meanwhile, each boy performed some special daily duty towards the maintenance or operation of the cap that lasted from one to two hours. This short lineage - Chocura to Asquam to Pasquaney - illustrates how practices and philosophies were passed down from one camp to the next; yet each camp placed its own mark upon the evolution. [Sargent, A Handbook of Summer Camps] Two other camps were established during the 1880s: Camp Algonquin, which joined Chocurua and Asquam on Squam Lake in New Hampshire and Camp Dudley at Westport, New York. Camp Algonquin was established in 1886 by Edwin DeMerrite, a Dartmouth graduate and principal of Berkely Preparatory School. Borrowing from its neighbor camps on the lake, it was considered a "science" camp with a strong emphasis on nature appreciation. The camp had a nature library, microscope, herbarium, and a wild fern and flower garden. Eleanor Eells writes in her History of Organized Camping that as an educator "he placed emphasis on reading and exposing boys to the sound principles of work as the law of life and love of work as the joy of life." A camp also had to be profitable and his was. In fact, it was the most successful of the pioneering camps, operating continuously from 1886 to 1929. By the time the camp closed, DeMerritte was in his eighties. Camp Dudley was the country's first camp sponsored by the YMCA. The YMCA had programs for boys and young men in the cities as early as the 1850s. In the summer of 1885, Sumner Dudley, a New York businessman, borrowed a tent, rented a boat, and invited seven boys from Newburgh, New York, who belonged to the YMCA on a camping trip to Pine Point on Orange Lake, about six miles away. Dudley continued doing this for the next six summers without official recognition by the organization until 1891 when he purchased land on Lake Champlain two miles from Westport and established the camp there permanently. Finally in 1903 the New York State YMCA took over the responsibility of the camp and post-humously renamed it Camp Dudley for its founder. Dudley died in 1897 at the young age of forty-three and the camp was carried on by his friend George Peck. By the turn of the century there were more than 20 YMCA camps in the northeast. Camps sponsored and funded by charitable or social welfare organizations opened up camping to a greater share of the population. [Eells, History of Organized Camping. Sargent, A Handbook of Summer Camps] During the 1890s the camp movement gained momentum with the establishment of 18 new camps. Five of these were in New Hampshire, the fountain of the movement, and four were in New York. But dispersal was occurring throughout New England and extending out as far west as Tennessee. Another significant development was on the horizon. Camp Arey on Lake Canandaigua, New York, was established in 1890 by a university professor. It began as a natural science camp for boys and for the first two years was named Camp Arey Science Camp. It had the greater distinction, however, of being the first summer camp to have a summer session reserved just for girls, and it served them exclusively beginning in 1902. In 1898, Camp Altamont in the Adirondacks became the first full girls camp and in 1900 Mrs. Oscar Holt started Redcroft, a camp for girls, on Newfound Lake near Hebron, New Hampshire. [Eells, A History of Organized Camping] These camps broke the male monopoly on the camp movement and forever changed its nature. Girls at camp, like boys, were supposed to learn about and interact with the environment, and each other, through vigorous outdoor activities, like sailing, canoeing, hiking, archery, baseball, swimming, and diving. Camp was a far cry from promenading about the verandas of Newport, even though many of the early girls camps still stressed the importance of developing skills necessary to be mothers and homemakers. A FLOURISHING OUTDOOR YOUTH MOVEMENT The pioneering nineteenth-century camps and their innovative leaders set in motion a movement that snowballed during the early twentieth century. From three little camps on Squam Lake, New Hampshire, there were about 150 private camps in the United States by 1910, almost a third of which were for girls. Five years later the total number doubled again. The early camps also played a role in the larger outdoor youth movements that took shape in the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1902, painter, author, and naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton introduced his new youth organization, "The Woodcraft Indians" to a national audience in a regular column he wrote for the Ladies Home Journal. Seton was a wealthy anti-modernist who saw city boys falling victim to the ills of urban society and modern times, and in need of a program for building character as they developed into manhood. Like other Progressive reformers, Seton aspired to instill traditional American values of honor, physical courage, and independence of mind and spirit through outdoor activity. What set him apart, however, was that he adopted the pre-colonial American Indians and was inspired by their communal living, shared use of resources, and respect for the environment. [Anderson H. Allen, The Chief: Ernest Thompson Seton and the Changing West. Betty Keller, Black Wolf: The Life of Ernest Thompson Seton. Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian. Peter J. Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America. Released by Seton's publisher: Ernest Thompson Set: A Biographical Sketch Don by Various Hands to Which is Attached a Complete Bibliography of the Works of This Author., Et al.] Even before his first article appeared in May 1902, he had an opportunity to experiment with his ideas on his Cos Cob, Connecticut, estate he called Wyndygoul. A Sinawa village was once located on the site. Seton had purchased a group of abandoned farms, fenced off the estate, and had planned a series of conservation projects. This, however, was much to the chagrin of several local boys who had used the area for hunting, picnicking, and hiking. To demonstrate their frustrations over the infringement on their presumed squatter's rights, the boys began a campaign of harassment that involved tearing down the fences, shooting his animals, and painting choice graffiti on his gateposts. Rather than seek punitive damages, Seton marched into their one room schoolhouse one morning in April, 1902 and invited the young vandals "to come up to the Indian village on my place" to camp during the coming Easter break. [Allen H. Anderson, The Chief: Ernest Thompson Seton and the Changing West] The boys took him up on his offer and when they arrived they found that Seton had indeed set up a makeshift Indian village at Wyndygoul. In a biography of Seton entitled The Chief, Allen Anderson describes the estate grounds: Included among the diverse artifacts were northern Plains tepees, "gorgeous with pictures of warriors and buffaloes", and two Algonquin canoes of Malecite birchbark. The dominant feature of this modular Indian camp was a large council ring, around which were several rock paintings. The council fire in the center of the ring was encircled by a stone necklace representing the Great Spirit. Four arms extending from its circumference symbolized spirit, mind, body, and service: at the end of each arm was a fastened lamp with three rays, which stood for the laws of woodcraft. Obviously, this fire-centered circle, patterned after a Navajo sand painting, was a symbolic picture of nature's cycle. Even the broad veranda of the main house was decorated for the occasion, with Indian blankets and rugs hanging among the animal trophies.  Seton's Woodcraft Indians were a hybrid of various tribal cultures, which he justified with the motto, "The best things of the best indians." Their government structure was based on the Iroquois, while the system of honors came from the Sioux. In his "Woodcraft League" boys were taught to "think Indian." They took Indian names based upon certain physical or personality traits and used them exclusively when in camp. They learned plant and animal identification, trail marking, and stalking, as well as various Indian arts, crafts, and rituals. They were rewarded "coups" for demonstrating woodcraft knowledge or acts of outdoor bravery and skill, such as sleeping outside for sixty nights in a row. Boys who performed exceptional acts were awarded "grand coups". As the youths passed each test they moved up a hierarchy and earned feathers for their headdress. Tepees were favored over tents, moccasins over shoes, headbands over hats, and so on. [John Henry Wadland, Ernest Thomson Seton: Man in Nature and the Progressive Era, 1880 - 1915] Meanwhile, the term woodcraft, as the name implies, meant craftsmanship. To Seton this entailed independence, individuality, and resourcefulness. "Probably nothing is sadder", he wrote, "than to go into a home where everything is bought ready prepared...[where] no brain or pride has gone into the making". The anti-modernist believed that it was inconsistent for American society to pride itself in individualism if its individuals did not know "the pleasure of workmanship, the joy that comes from things made well by [one's] own hands". The wilderness demanded these skills: it was the place where "life is made worthwhile, not by the few great moments, but by the making of the daily life...full of meaning". [John Henry Wadland. Ernest Thompson Seton: Man in Nature in the Progressive Era, 1880 - 1915] Seton's magazine columns described all of this and spelled out the new organization's constitution, laws, games and deeds, which were published later as The Birch-Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians. This became the official handbook and bible of the Woodcraft Indians. The organization was the first of its kind. It received wide exposure in national serials. At least fifty Woodcraft tribes, with fifty members each, were organized in the first year alone. The national confederation was known first as "The League of Seton's Indians" and later as "The League of the Woodcraft Indians". But for Seton, who adopted the name Black Wolf, the League was necessary only as a forum for sharing ideas; the real strength came from its decentralized structure, which created "an atmosphere that allowed for simultaneous development of rights and responsibilities, both of which he perceived as social instincts". [Anderson, The Chief] Perhaps most essential to Seton was that adults acted only in an advisory role. Control was in the hands of the youths, both at the level of the national "grand council" and at the level of the local tribe. Like the early summer camps, democracy was paramount. Above all, he believed his organization could "bring together young people from various so-called stations, break down the barriers that society has foolishly placed between them, and establish in their minds while they are young a finer kind of humanity, a real understanding that the important thing is the association of the human spirit." [Anderson, The Chief] Seton's rapid success was the talk of New York social circles and his camp even impressed the likes of philosophical naturalist John Burroughs. Burroughs, along with Theodore Roosevelt, was a staunch critic of "nature fakers". These were nature writers who embellished their contacts with the wilderness, or basically just gave a false account, in order to sell books. Seton had been initially tagged as one by Burroughs because, despite their scientific accuracy, his widely successful nature books such as Wild Animals I Have Known humanized wild animals. Burroughs was invited to Wyndygale where Seeton showed him his natural history library and museum, along with his camp. He walked away persuaded and grudgingly informed Roosevelt: Seton has got hold of a big thing in his boys' Indian camp...I have been there once and much impressed with it all, and with good results to the boys that are sure to follow his scheme. All the boy's wild energy and love of deviltry are turned to new channels, and he is taught woodcraft and natural history and Indian lore in a most fascinating way. I really think it well worthy of your attention and encouragement. DIFFUSION FROM THE CULTURAL HEARTH: THE EARLY WISCONSIN CAMPS By 1910 there had been 127 summer camps established over the previous three decades. 92 for boys and 35 for girls. They were almost exclusively concentrated in the East, and more than half were located in Maine and New Hampshire alone. Constellations of camps could be found in southern Maine around Lake Sebago and the Long Lake region, in the foothills of the White Mountains and around Lake Winnepesaukee in central New Hampshire, along the upper Connecticut River Valley in Vermont, and around the shores of Lake Champlain, and in the Adirondacks and the Catskills in New York. These areas were the backyard playgrounds for the cities along the eastern seaboard, and they were easily accessible by train, and later, highway. But the movement was also drifting west. The urban system of the interior was in place by the end of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century saw new regional centers emerge. Nearly all of the large urban centers of the Midwest doubled in population between 1890 and 1910, and its largest metropolis, Chicago, which had doubled in population from 1880 to 1890, grew from one million to two in the twenty year span. These places had the same growing pains that cities to the east experienced a generation earlier, and had the same types of conditions and problems associated with all rapidly growing industrial centers. But what they also had by this time was a sizable status-conscious urban class, families of wealth and influence, who affirmed this status through separating themselves from the working class and emulating their East Coast counterparts. Sending children out of the city for summer camp apparently one way; it was, as Porter Sargent put it in his guide to summer camps in 1915, "the customary thing". In 1904 the first two private summer camps were established in the Midwest, both in Wisconsin: Camp Highlands in Sayner and Camp Minocqua near Minocqua. Camp Highlands was founded by Dr. Harry Gillet, a principal at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (Elementary), or the Dewey School as it was sometimes known, named for its founder and progressive educator John Dewey. The Laboratory School, under the auspices of the University of Chicago, was initially an experiment in progressive education. It was designed to be a school system that was an organic whole from the kindergarten to the university. In 1904 a group of wealthy parents of older boys who attended the school and lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the city's south side wanted their city-reared sons to have a summer of work and recreation in the wilderness and convinced Gillet to organize such a venture. In June of that year he, along with a teaching staff from the school and university, a carpenter, and ten boys, set out for the woods of northern Wisconsin. They had purchased a site on the northeast shores of Plum Lake in central Vilas County, adjacent to Warner's Forest Home Summer Resort. The first summer was consumed with cutting trees, pulling stumps, making dirt roads, clearing underbrush, and repairing buildings, while living in a small cottage and just one tent. They had several rowboats and carried their provisions from the town of Star Lake several miles away, which at the time was the terminus of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. Parents got their wish, their boys spent the summer working in the wilderness, though they did manage to develop a swimming area, so all fun was not lost. [Eels. History of Organized Camping 61; Promotional Brochure for Camp Highlands, ca. 1960; Mary Elizabeth Schofield Hickey, Lake People: Summers at Plum Lake: Self Published, 1985.] The next year twice as many boys arrived, more land was cleared, counselors were hired, and a launch was purchased that had been found on Lake Winnebago. By 1908, camp enrollment was fifty and additional land had been purchased to accommodate the growing number of campers and their parents who periodically visited. In 1911 Dr. W.J. Monilaw attended camp as a counselor and two years later he became owner and director. "Doc" Monilaw, as he was known, was in charge of athletics and physical education at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, as well as the medical examiner. Porter Sargent pointed out in A Handbook of the Best Private Schools of the United States and Canada that "camps reflect the individual character of the men who own and control them." "Doc" was an advocate for athletics and physical education and his camp emphasized both. He was relatively straight laced and held high expectations for both campers and staff. The latter were selected based on their personal character and outdoor athletic skills. The work program continued, but increasingly more time was devoted to activities. In addition to athletics, dramatics were very important, especially on rainy days, and music and photography were popular activities as well. In Monilaw's first year as director, 1914, there were 84 boys and 18 counselors and instructors. The boys slept in tents until the 1920's when they were gradually replaced by cabins. In 1933 Dr. Norvil Beeman joined the staff and in 1939 became a partner. Monilaw was in charge of the camp until 1959, when at the age of 85 he sold it to Beeman and his wife and four other couples who had been involved with the camp. Camp Highlands is still in operation today and is now one of the oldest camps in the United States. Camp Highlands and Camp Minocqua were the Midwest's first attempts to imitate the private camp movement that had grown out of New England. And for a while they were the only camps in Wisconsin and among just a handful to have been established in the Midwest. In fact, by 1910 just three additional camps had opened in any Midwestern state: Camp Indianola in Madison, Wisconsin (1907), Camp Mishawaka in Grand Rapids, Minnesota (1909), and Algoma Camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (1910). The next camp to open in northern Wisconsin was Camp Winnepe (1912) on the south shore of Catfish Lake near Eagle River, followed by Camp Minne-wawa (1912) between Big Carr and Tomahawk Lakes. Minne-wawa was the first girls camp established in Wisconsin and in the Midwest, although it was short lived, operating from 1912 until 1923. It was started by five sisters, one of whom, Isabelle, took over its direction along with her husband Marcus Ebert. The Eberts enjoyed success for a while,, but hard times, and eventually illness, forced them to sell the camp in 1925. The buyer was the Wisconsin American Legion, which purchased Minne-wawa as a rest haven for ailing veterans, which its purpose remains today. Camp Idyle Wyld near Three Lakes and Camp Bryn-Afon near Rhinelander were the only other girls camps before the end of World War I. The summer camp movement in northern Wisconsin had a relatively slow start; just four boys camps and three girls camps had been established prior to the end of World War I. The main thrust of the movement in the Midwest, and in northern Wisconsin in particular, did not occur until the 1920s. Twenty three camps were opened in northern Wisconsin in that decade alone, ushering in a golden age in the summer camp movement. Nationally, the number of private camps grew from 461 in 1920 to 1346 in 1930. There were several reasons for the surge here and elsewhere. First, the 1920s economic prosperity allowed for an increasing number of families to send their children to a camp, although private camps typically remained the domain of those with money, old or new. The average tuition of $300 or more was well beyond the means of most middle class families, although YMCA and other agency camps brought the opportunity into reach for a greater share of the population. The Chicago YMCA ran Camp Na-wak-wa on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation where tuition was just $15 per week in 1925, while the Chicago Public Schools operated Camp Roosevelt near Mercer where tuition for the entire season was between $100 and $115 in 1929. Perhaps Camp Roosevelt could manage on the low tuition, which was about one-third of that of a private camp, because of the sheer number of campers and economies of scale. In 1929, for instance, enrollment peaked at 500 boys and a staff of 50, or roughly eight times the size of a typical private camp at that time, making it one of the largest camps of any kind in the United States. [Chicago & North Western Railway, Summer Resorts on the Lakes of Northern Wisconsin. Chicago: The Railway. 1925: Sargent, 1929: "Boys Camp Near Mercer is One of the Largest in the Country." The Wisconsin Magazine. September, 1930] Secondly, World War I had a critical effect on camping, just as it did on all of America's cultural institutions. It stimulated a national sense of patriotism, but it also called attention to the questionable war readiness and physical fitness of America's young men. Many camps that opened in the early 1920s stressed military training among their activities and some were owned by or under the direction of former military officers. Camp Dewey near Woodruff was owned by Major W.E. Dewey, while Camp Thorpe on Pelican Lake was under the direction of Colonel William H. Thorpe. Even the programs within established camps took on a militaristic bent. For example, Camp Minocqua, which stressed woodcraft, emphasized military training in its 1918 brochure, with photographs of young boys lined up in regiments with sticks for guns - stomachs in, chests out. Many camps were transformed into armies of youngsters parading around with make believe rifles protecting the Northwoods from foreign invaders. Thirdly, just as private camps had an impact on the organizational camp movements of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, and others, the reverse is also true. The well funded organizations were able to generate and sustain national interest and enthusiasm for the youth camp movement. Finally, greater accessibility and mobility in the 1920s encouraged the establishment of summer camps in northern Wisconsin. Campers still arrived by train, some as late as the 1960s, but it was just simply easier and more efficient to transport necessary supplies and campers in and around the region. Basically, camps grew along with the rest of the recreation industry in the north, and infrastructure improvements contributed to this. Summer camps that opened during the 1920s were clustered into three areas, coinciding with the resort districts, which, in turn, corresponded with the densest lake districts and the railroads: the Lakeland Region of western Vilas and Oneida counties, the Eagle Waters region of eastern Vilas and Oneida counties, and to a lesser degree, the Hayward Lakes region in the northwestern part of the state. The Lakeland area had the largest boys contingent which included Red Arrow Camp (1920), Camp Ad-A-Wa-Gam (1921), Camp Ty-Glyn (ca. 1922), Na-Wak-Wa (ca. 1922), Camp Deerhorn (1922), Camp Dewey (ca. 1923), Camp Swastica (ca. 1923), Camp Strongheart (1925), and Camp Council (1926). Girls camps established in the 1920s in the Lakeland area included Sherwood Forest (1920), Camp Agawak (1921), Camp Osoha (19210, and Warwick Woods (1921). The Eagle Waters vicinity produced the following camps for boys during the 1920s: Camp Minne-wonka (1921), Camp Thorpe (1921), Camp Woodstock (ca. 1922), Camp Chickopee (ca. 1923), Camp Flambeau (ca. 1923), and Camp Chippewa (1923). Girls Camps from in and around the Eagle Waters area that joined the movement in the 1920s included Minne-wonka Lodge (1921), Camp Miss-A-Bos (1929), and The Joy Camps (1929). To the west, in and around the Hayward Lakes region, the following camps came into existence during this golden age: Camp Rockne (which was owned by legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne), Court Oreilles (1925), Camp Casady (1925), Camp Onarga (ca. 1925), Camp Winnekee (1928), Camp Stone Hill (1924) was the lone girls camp identified in the Hayward vicinity during this time. THE PEOPLE OF CAMP Camps and resorts shared many similarities, but the background of those who owned and ran them was not one of them. Resort owners came from a variety of occupations, mostly out of the logging industry, where they actually had hands on experience working the land. The lived in the Northwoods year round and typically took on outdoor work, be it sawing logs or building boats in the off season to subsidize their income. For them, "woodcraft" was something they did on a daily basis: it was their livelihood. Camp directors, on the other hand, were doctors, physical education teachers, athletic directors, and college professors. Their careers were in the city, as was their family, home, and contemporaries. In 1929, for instance, only two camp directors maintained a residence, or at least a winter mailing address, in northern Wisconsin. The remainder were from Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and several other large cities. Camp Minocqua's John Sprague was a physician from Evanston; Lillian "Billie" Marshall of Warwick Woods was a physical education professor at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, while her partner, Helen James, was a private school teacher in New York City; Burl lee Dougherty of Camp Council was a junior high school principal in Milwaukee; "Doc" Monilaw from Camp Highlands was both a medical doctor and teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools; Dr. F.H. Ewerhardt of Camp Minne-wonka in Three Lakes was a professor at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis; and the list goes on. Activities like woodcraft were hardly part of the daily routines of this educated professional, urban contingent. In fact, a subtle, yet revealing, difference between those who ran the resorts and those who ran the camps was that many of the activities that the latter called crafts, the former called jobs. Hence, resort owners and camp directors coexist on the lakes of northern Wisconsin, but they were ensconced, to to speak, in different camps. As with operating a resort, it took many people to run a summer camp. The average size of the staff at a camp in northern Wisconsin in 1929 was just over 20, while the average size of the enrollment was a little more than 70. This meant that there was a staff member for every 3.5 campers. Camp Minocqua had an enrollment of 100 and a staff of 26, which included a business manager, secretary, supervisor of athletic activities, director of handicraft, people in charge of music, drama, and trips, a camp cook, a superintendent of buildings and grounds, and a registered nurse. There were also 12 counselors who worked most closely with the campers. They were mainly college students, graduate students, or recent graduates of the top universities in the Midwest like Northwestern, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Chicago. They were typically in charge of one cabin or tent, where they bunked with their group. They ate with them, instructed them in various activities and led them on trips. Many counselors had been campers who returned after their final, senior season. Others, who had been away for many years, returned well into their adult and professional lives. Campers were from wealthy families, man of whom frequented the resorts or owned summer homes in northern Wisconsin. They were primarily from Chicago and other large Midwestern cities. An early brochure for Camp Minocqua provided a list of people who had sent their children there during the previous two seasons. Among the 135 names listed, 123 were from Chicago or its immediate suburbs. The Camp Highlands roster for the 1922 season listed 112 campers: 72 from the City of Chicago, 21 from around the city of Chicago metropolitan area, and 19 from other cities. The large Chicago contingent was particularly concentrated around the wealthy Hyde Park area near the University of Chicago where the founder, Harry Gillet, and the long time director, Doc Monilaw, were affiliated. Those who came from the expanding metropolitan area were from some of the most affluent suburbs at the time including Oak Park-River Forest, Winnetka, and Evanston. The rosters during the 1920s at Warwick Woods, Camp Highlands' sister camp on Plum Lake, displayed a similar geography, although the girls came from a wider area. Among the 233 campers who attended Warwick Woods between 1922 and 1928, about one-third were from the city of Chicago, one-third from the city's suburbs, and one third from other cities, some from as far away as New York, Washington D.C., and Boston. One of the directors, Helen James, lived in New York City and taught at a small college, which would explain the East Coast connection. Only a small share of the American population could afford to send their child, or children, to a private camp. The average tuition for the season in northern Wisconsin was $315 in 1929, which was commensurate with New England camps, but still beyond the means of most families, including professionals. Some camps charged as much as $450 for the eight week season. This was an enormous sum of money at the time, and not much more than what a working class family earned in a year. For that kind of money a whole family could spend the entire summer at a first rate American Plan resort. But like the local resorts, just because a family had money did not necessarily mean that their son or daughter could attend a particular camp. Many camps required references and, in turn, listed their own references or clientele in their promotional brochures. At Warwick Woods, "two satisfactory references" were required before a girl could be "accepted as a member" to the camp. In a 1921 Camp Minne-Wawa brochure under a bold heading "Who Will Be Accepted" it stated that "girls from good families who can furnish satisfactory references or who are personally known to any of the councillors or directors will be accepted upon application to the director." Clearwater Camp's brochure in their inaugural year of 1933 asked specifically for financial references. Like admittance to a private country club, the prohibitive fees and required references ensured that private camps would be composed of children from families of similar economic and social status. Discussing the early history of east coast camps, Richard Kennedy and Michael Kimball write, "Each year the rosters of the founding camps would read like the social register. If you were born into this small but powerful segment of society in Boston or New York or Philadelphia, your camp was the first step in a logical educational progression that extended to an elite boarding school and, finally, to an Ivy League college." The camps of northern Wisconsin served the Midwest's elite in similar fashion. In conclusion, private summer camps were indeed recreational institutions, but they were educational, cultural, and social institutions as well. They were part of a larger camp movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century and flourished in the early twentieth century, and they were part of the general back to nature phenomenon that looked to the past for alternatives to what was perceived to be wrong with modern, urban America. Their themes embraced the frontier narrative as children played the roles of pioneers, woodsmen, Indians, explorers, and voyageurs. At a time when agriculture promoters and other boosters were pushing the region towards modernity, the Wisconsin Northwoods reverted to frontier and wilderness for thousands of city children each summer. The camps shaped their perceptions of nature more than any other experience in their lives, so that the two, nature and northern Wisconsin, would forever be linked in their minds. These were the children who would return as adults to get away from the city, and would look forward to, and expect, the frontier-like experience and environment they relished in as children to still be there. http://www.yahoo.com/Post_Friends_%26_Family.htmlThe_Lodge.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Deweyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefellerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._RockefellerArchives_Magazine/Entries/2009/10/28_All_About_Judge_Hook_and_Hooks_Point.htmlArchives_Magazine/Entries/2009/10/28_All_About_Judge_Hook_and_Hooks_Point.htmlhttp://campdudley.org/http://www.pasquaney.org/http://www.campchoconut.com/http://www.campgreenbrier.com/http://www.wyonegonic.com/http://www.camptecumseh.net/http://www.campwachusett.com/http://www.campbelknap.org/http://www.mowglis.org/http://www.alohafoundation.org/aloha/Dinglebat.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Erahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burroughshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Rooseveltshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3shapeimage_2_link_4shapeimage_2_link_5shapeimage_2_link_6shapeimage_2_link_7shapeimage_2_link_8shapeimage_2_link_9shapeimage_2_link_10shapeimage_2_link_11shapeimage_2_link_12shapeimage_2_link_13shapeimage_2_link_14shapeimage_2_link_15shapeimage_2_link_16shapeimage_2_link_17shapeimage_2_link_18shapeimage_2_link_19shapeimage_2_link_20shapeimage_2_link_21
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SUMMER CAMP IN AMERICA - and HOW HIGHLANDS PLAYED A ROLE July 4th, 2010