Changes

Perhaps the first organized summer camp for children occurred in Gunnery, Connecticut, where Frederick W. Gunn, a well-known abolitionist, established a recreational camp. Already then it was seen as a place where young children can connect with nature. As the Industrial Age progressed after the Civil War in the 1870s, families began to increasingly migrate to cities, escaping country life that also promised fewer opportunities for outdoor activities for families. As adults, often men, worked in factories and sometimes offices, children would often have little to do, in particular during the summer months when there were prolonged breaks from school. Increasingly, as families began to spend more of their time in the city, they also saw that children would spend a lot of time indoors, where many urban houses or apartments also offered limited outdoor space. This was seen as particularly a problem for boys, where outdoor activities were seen as a way for a boy to develop into a man. Some held that if boys spent a lot of time at home, rather than being outdoors as they would have in the country, they would become more femanized. There was also a fear that boys would grow up to be morally corrupt if they only experienced urban life, leading to religious and community leaders pushing for the establishment of summer camps. This helped to create an initial movement to begin to develop summer camps more substantially across the country, where the first summer camps focused on opportunities for boys to reconnect with the outdoors and the countryside. Effectively, the earliest summer camps were about escaping the big city and reconnecting with nature so boys can be better men. People saw that being outdoors built character and families began to place their kids, mainly boys, into the relatively few summer camps that established themselves in the 1870s-1880s. Camp Chocorua was an early dedicated summer camp, which was founded in New Hampshire by Ernest Balch, who was a student at Dartmouth college at the time. This camp was seen as a way for boys to heal from potentially negative effects of cities and help develop their character. Boys would get exposed to activities such as swimming, rowing, and even shooting or hunting, with camps also teaching them leadership skills. Summer camps became not only places for playful activities and sports, but structured education, particularly with moral behaviour, was part of the routines. This also meant that many early camps generally catered towards the upper classes as well, as middle and lower classes often could not afford the camps or needed to have their children around to help work in the factories or fields. Educators, philanthropoistsphilanthropists, health professionals, and religious leaders all soon became major proponents of summer camps, as their interests aligned in seeing summer camps being beneficial not only towards boys but also society more generally (Figure 1). <ref>For more on the establishment and early summer camps in the 19th century, see: Paris, L., 2010. <i>Children’s nature: the rise of the American summer camp</i>. New York University Press, New York, NY.</ref>.