If These Walls Could Talk

I read a blog post today that really got me thinking about an essential piece of the camp landscape… the cabins. In this post the author pondered:

“If only the cabins had a Facebook page… Names I’d never heard of clicked like and share because camp meant the same thing to them. They slept in those same cabins. They wrote on those same walls, and they tell stories that begin the same way. ...Too bad the cabins don’t have a Twitter feed.” -Stacey Ebert

This got me thinking about the history and origins of cabin life. According to Van Slyck’s A Manufactured Wilderness, it was not until the 1940s that marked the shift to permanent cabins. Previously many camps used Tents as camper housing. This was particularly common among organizations such as the YMCA, Girl Scouts, and the Camp Fire Girls.

Early Tents at Camp Becket

As ideas changed about the health and well-being of campers, cabins also changed. In most cases, tents proved problematic in creating the best environment for the camper. Tents could not adequately keep campers dry, and proved to be costly to maintain. However, many camp professional still agreed with the Park Service architect, Albert H. Good in his book Park and Recreation Structures:

“the [canvas] tent stands as an inherited symbol of high adventure, especially to youth.”
-Park and Recreation Structures 1938

The push for more durable facilities began to win out, however, and cabins in their basic form (permanent structures with four walls, a floor and a roof) became the new standard in camping. During this time Van Slyck describes the shift in counselor roles as shifting from “a passive force for good” to a more active part of the camper experience. This shifting view, translated to spaces that allowed counselors to closely monitor campers. However, in the 1950's there was yet another shift towards providing more privacy for counselors. Original cabins were often augmented with additional counselor sleeping rooms.

As I mentioned in my previous post, many of today’s camps were built before 1960. This period brought about a flux in ideas about the most effective cabin design. Many cabins of this era were constructed to house a single counselor per unit. In today’s world, this is simply not the case. Today’s best practice requires a minimum of 2 counselors per 8-12 campers. Many camps are faced with the challenge of campers that were designed for smaller counselor to camper ratios. Take Camp Ocakanickon, in Medford New Jersey for example -- their camper cabins were built to sleep 8. This requires a large amount of staff when the counselor/campers ratio becomes 2:6 per cabin.

Typical Cabin at Camp Ockanickon

As campers “needs” continue to become more elaborate… (think air conditioning, Wi-Fi, built in sound systems), I think it is important to remember a simpler time… a “back to nature approach.” The early tent cabins did not attempt to recreate the camper’s home environment. In fact they sought to offer an opposite experience for youth development. Van Slyck comments: 

“physical changes in all parts of the camp landscape demonstrate that perceptions about the needs of children where in flux throughout the twentieth century. As was the very definition of childhood itself.”

Today's building codes also add an extra challenge to these once simple structures, in many cases requiring fire suppression systems and fully accessible facilities for campers with disabilities. In addition, camper (or perhaps it's actually parent) desires to have integrated showers and restrooms in the cabins are creating not so "simple" structures. There are however many camps that are still building basic cabins without restrooms, showers, or even electricity bringing a whole new approach to "unplugging" kids for the summer. 

New cabin construction at Camp Arbutus Hayo Went Ha

In today’s world of iPhones, tablets, and ever increasing tech savvy kids, it is hard to say how the camp landscape, particularly cabins, will evolve to serve a new generation of campers. There is a camp with every cabin design imaginable; from fully conditioned inside space to rustic cabins, to tents. It's about finding the right fit for your camp to continue to serve a new generation of campers. 

Van Slyck Abigail. A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2006. Print.

Stacey, Ebert. "For the Love of Camp Cabins." American Camp Association. N.p., 28 May 2014. Web. 21 Aug. 2014.

Back to Nature...

“Not that long ago, summer camp was a place where you camped, hiked in the woods, learned about plants and animals, or told firelight stories about ghosts or mountain lions. As likely as not today, "summer camp" is a weight-loss camp, or a computer camp. For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality. Increasingly, nature is something to watch, to consume, to wear—to ignore. A recent television ad depicts a four-wheel-drive SUV racing along a breathtakingly beautiful mountain stream—while in the backseat two children watch a movie on a flip-down video screen, oblivious to the landscape and water beyond the windows.
A century ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced that the American frontier had ended. His thesis has been discussed and debated ever since. Today, a similar and more important line is being crossed.”

- Excerpt from Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods.

Summer camps in America trace their origin to many different social forces interacting together. The end of the nineteenth century was dominated by a movement to preserve what wilderness was left, and to reacquaint one's self (and one's child) with nature. This was no doubt made to seem pertinent by the declaration, in 1893, that the American Frontier was closed. This marked the end of an era. In a few short centuries, we had explored the entirety of this expansive country -- a national journey that had been romanticized in countless dime novels and tall tales that drifted back across the trails to the folks back east. This romanticizing of wilderness and the West would grow like a wildfire following 1893, and this was perhaps most apparent in the number of summer camps that sprang up around the turn of the century.

Let's take a look at how some of these social forces created the landscapes of summer camps. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Sequoia National Park, Yosemite National Park, and the Grand Canyon National Monument were established. This same feeling sparked the influx of summer camps across the country, with the majority of camps in the East, (the most industrialized region), fewer in the Midwest, and very few in the West. Author Van Slyck reports in her book A Manufactured Wilderness, that many camps were built on “reclaimed” farm land “scrubbed clean” of its industrial use to return it to its original wilderness.

This “return to original wilderness” was concentrated in boys’ camps. Girls’ camps were not widely established until the 1900s, some 20 years after boys' camps started cropping up. With time these theories changed, and so did the camp landscape. Camp became less about turning boys into men, and catered more to the individual needs of campers through facility comforts (such as more permanent facilities), skill development, and attention to the overall well-being of the child. Summer camps began to develop a more complex landscape of the tools needed to create a successful summer camp. According to Van Slyck, before 1930, few camps - private or organization-based - were touched by professional design experience.

Now fast-forward 100 years to today. Once again, there is a push for the preservation of nature and a focus on its social benefits on our society, especially in our children. Richard Louv’s book warns of the negative effects of raising children without access to nature. Louv is pointing out many similarities between the closing of the frontier and, to use his words, the “last child in the woods.”

In today’s world, the camp design is critical to the functionality and success of the camp. While there are several newer specialty camps as Louv references, majority of traditional camps in existence today were built before 1960. Many of today’s camps are the very camps Van Slyck mentions as being built 100 years ago on reclaimed farmland.

Can a 100 year-old institution be the solution to today’s societal issues with our children? With the right tools, we think yes! A master plan is a logical roadmap for implementation of operational, program and physical development goals, and is a useful tool for ensuring that your camp creates an environment that helps your campers connect with the splendors of nature. Additionally, a Master Plan's planning documents are an ideal resource for generating funding and attracting publicity, as the process forces you to define exactly what your camp is all about in the present, and where you want your camp to grow in the future. And the community involvement that having a demonstrated plan for your camp generates encourages a strong sense of ownership. Overall, investment in a master plan highlights issues – both current and anticipated – and presents tangible, achievable solutions to make the most of your camp’s future.

In today’s world, master planning is common among camps. From one perspective, this might seem far from the original intent of the “wilderness of camp.” However, upon closer inspection, it does not seem that far from the original camps that “reclaimed” land to create a new “wilderness.” Van Slyck called it a “Manufactured Wilderness.” Manufactured, yes. Effective? Also yes. 100 years ago, camps provided a solution to the closing of the frontier. Today, it is once again camps that can provide the solution to the problem of the 'last child in the woods'.


Ayres, Van Slyck Abigail. A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2006. Print.

Louv, Richard. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin of Chapel Hill, 2005. Print.