When Camp Onanda Gives Her Call by Carol Truesdale

Author:Carol Truesdale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2015-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Oddly, it seems, Babcock Hall was now a hazard. Well, this was a plea for money, and like all negotiating, painting a “needy” picture got better results. Babcock likely did need some major upgrades and structural fixing up after more than thirty years of use. So the YWCA went with the ACA’s suggestion of putting girls of the same age in smaller groups with counselors. This truly would be safer and would provide a more meaningful experience. Ten units for younger girls would be on Lower Camp, and the teenagers would have ten new cabins on the new property across the lake road.

Also noted in the presentation was that the new cabins to be built would cost no more than a garage to construct. That would likely mean a cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 a cabin. Of course, that’s just material costs. Building ten cabins, two washhouses and a lodge on a hillside is far more challenging than paper plans indicated.

Still, it was to be a tough sell, and it took nearly two years to get hammers and saws humming again at Camp Onanda. The exact amount raised is not known, but the 1957 brochure proudly and excitedly announced that the modernization of Lower Camp was completed and “greater use will be made of the newly acquired camping area.” That “newly acquired” area would be Teen Town.

Junior campers marveled at the newness of Onanda in 1957 and jumped right into activities. Teen campers were still waiting for Teen Town to be completed. While that must have seemed an agonizing wait, Teen Town emerged slowly from the hillside.

In the summer of 1958, Teen Town consisted of three cabins; King Hall, for teen gatherings; and a large washhouse ready and open for business. The cabin design was changed from the brochure design, and one very large washhouse rather than two was another change made to the original plan. Still, a spanking-new area for teens was taking form on Teen Hill. That would be the first summer that junior campers and teens would share Onanda all summer.

As the last camper and staff left Onanda in the summer of 1958, the workers returned. Carpenters, volunteers and anyone able to assist headed up that steep, dirt road to Teen Town, bent on the goal of completing the modernization plan set forth three years earlier. That meant getting the foundations set for seven more cabins on a steep hillside, carting materials up that steep incline and doing it within a couple months before winter set in and finishing work in the spring.

It’s just not known for sure how this new teen area of camp was renamed. Maybe the change came from builders who must have carried materials up and down that hill. Then, too, the girls of summer who would hike up and down that hill many times a day may have renamed it. Even though the YWCA maps of Onanda always designated this new area as Teen Town, campers and staff always called it Teen Hill.

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