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.