Camping

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Humans tamed the first campfires over 500,000 years ago, and the word "camp" itself comes from the Latin campus, or "level field," but recreational camping as a popular cultural practice did not emerge in the United States until the end of the nineteenth century, when large numbers of urban residents went "back to nature," fleeing the pressures of industrialization and increased immigration for the temporary pleasures of a primitive existence in the woods.

The camping movement began in earnest in the mid-nineteenth century, when upper-class men from New York, Boston, and other northeastern cities traveled to the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the White Mountains to hunt, fish, and find solace in the beauty and sublimity of untrammeled nature. Encouraged by such books as William H. H. Murray's Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-life in the Adirondacks (1869), these men sought to improve their moral and physical health and test their masculinity against the wilderness, much as their working-class brethren had tested it on the battlefields of the Civil War. They also set the tone of nostalgic nationalism that would characterize camping throughout the twentieth century, identifying themselves with idealized images of the pioneer frontiersmen as rugged individualist and the American Indian as Noble Savage.

By the end of the nineteenth century, and especially after the "closing of the frontier" in 1890, camping had developed into an established middle-class activity, one that relied as much on cities and industries as it sought to flee them. Its increasing popularity could be seen in the formation of outdoor clubs, such as the Boone and Crockett Club (1887) and the Sierra Club (1892); the publication of camp manuals, such as George W. Sears's Woodcraft (1884) and Horace Kephart's Camping and Woodcraft (1906); and the appearance of related periodicals, such as Forest and Stream (1873), Outing (1882), and Recreation (1894). Easy access to remote areas was made possible by the railroads, and the growth of the consumer culture—as evidenced by the development of department stores, such as Montgomery Ward (1872), and the mail-order business of Sears, Roebuck (1895)—provided campers with the proper gear for their wilderness voyages. At the same time, however, many campers supported the

conservation and preservation movements, which helped to establish the first national parks and forests.

The same forces of urbanization and industrialization that influenced the popularity of recreational camping among adults also affected the development of organized camping for children and young people. Although a long summer vacation made sense for a rural, agricultural population, technological advancements, and the expansion of the cities made this seasonal break from compulsory education increasingly obsolete in the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, many schools continued to close for the months of June, July, and August, and parents, educators, and church leaders were forced to look elsewhere for ways to keep children occupied during the hot summer months. Camp provided the perfect solution.

The first organized camping trip in the United States is said to have occurred in 1861, when Frederick William Gunn and his wife supervised a two-week outing of the Gunnery School for Boys in Washington, Connecticut, but the first privately operated camp did not appear until 1876, when Joseph Trimble Rothrock opened a camp to improve the health of young boys at North Mountain in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The oldest continuously operating summer camp in the United States—"Camp Dudley," located on Lake Champlain—was founded in 1886 by Sumner F. Dudley, who had originally established his camp on Orange Lake, near Newburgh, New York. By 1910, the organized camping movement had grown extensive enough to justify the founding of the American Camping Association, which by the 1950s boasted more than five thousand members.

Classifiable as either day camps or residential camps, summer camps have generally provided a mixture of education and recreation in a group-living environment in the out-of-doors, and their proponents have claimed that the camps build character, encourage health and physical fitness, enhance social, psychological, and spiritual growth, and foster an appreciation for the natural world. The majority of camps have been run by nonprofit organizations, such as the Boy and Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, 4-H Clubs, Salvation Army, YMCA, YWCA, YM-YWHA, and churches, synagogues, and other religious groups. Others have been private camps run by individuals and corporations, or public camps run by schools, municipal park and recreation departments, and state and federal agencies. Especially notable in the twentieth century has been the advent of innumerable special-interest camps, such as Christian and Jewish camps, sports camps, computer camps, language camps, space camps, weight-loss camps, and camps for outdoor and arts education.

Recreational camping developed in parallel with organized camping in the early twentieth century, influenced in part by the popularity of such nature writers as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs. Equally influential was the mass-production of the automobile and the creation of the modern highway system, which led to the development of motor camping and the formation of such organizations as the American Automobile Association, the Recreational Vehicle Association, and the Tin Can Tourists of America. The growth of camping reached a milestone in the 1920s, with camping stories being written by Ernest Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis; new products being developed by L. L. Bean and Sheldon Coleman (whose portable gas stove appeared in 1923), and the first National Conference on Outdoor Recreation being held in 1924.

The postwar suburbanization of the United States, combined with advances in materials technology and packaging, helped to turn camping into a mass cultural activity in the late twentieth century, one whose popularity not only affected the management of natural areas but also called into question its own reason for being. Nearly ten million recreational vehicles, or RVs, were on the road in the late 1990s, forcing national parks to install more water, sewer, and power lines and close less desirable tent-camping sites. Meanwhile, the introduction of aluminum-frame tents in the 1950s, synthetic fabrics in the 1960s, freeze-dried foods in the 1970s, chemical insect repellents in the 1980s, and ultra-light camp stoves in the 1990s allowed campers to penetrate further into the backcountry, where they often risked disturbing ecologically sensitive areas. With the invention of cellular telephones and global positioning satellites, however, many campers have begun to wonder whether their days as primitive recreators may in fact be numbered, and whether it will ever again be possible to leave technology and civilization behind for the light of an evening campfire and the silence of a beeperless world.

Belasco, Warren James. Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945. 1979. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Eells, Eleanor. History of Organized Camping: The First 100 Years. Martinsville, Indiana, American Camping Association, 1986.

Joselit, Jenna Weissman, ed. A Worthy Use of Summer: Jewish Summer Camping in America. With Karen S. Mittelman. Intro. Chaim Potok. Philadelphia, National Museum of American Jewish History, 1993.

Kephart, Horace. Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and Travelers in the Wilderness. Rev. ed. Intro. Jim Casada. 1917. Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1988.

Kraus, Richard G., and Margaret M. Scanlin. Introduction to Camp Counseling. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1983.

Schmitt, Peter J. Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America. Foreword by John R. Stilgoe. 1969. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

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