Share Your
Camp Story!
Come join the campfire circle. Long after the embers fade, the stories remain. Share your camp experience — the memories, moments, and lessons that stayed with you — and help carry this history forward like a well-worn trail, followed and renewed by each new generation.
THE VERY BEST CAMP IN CREATION...
IS YOUR CAMP!
Summer camps in western North Carolina make up the highest concentration of camps in the Southeast. For over 100 years, camps have been a consistent economic driver for the region while creating an affinity for and deep connection to the local mountains for generations of former campers. The story of western North Carolina summer camps fits into a larger narrative of the camping movement across America for over 150 years. Camps have changed over time, and its history is shaped by nostalgia endemic in camp culture.
"There is a Camp" from Camp and Picnic Warbler: A Collection of Camp Songs, c. 1929. Compiled and edited by Evelyn Hopson Wood, Director of Music at Camp Parry-dise (Highlands, NC), this songbook was published for purchase by camps nationwide. Wood credited several western North Carolina camps with assistance in compiling the collection, including Camp Greystone (Hendersonville, NC), Camp Suwaili (Chimney Rock, NC), Camp Rock Creek (Brevard, NC), and nearby Camp Laurel Falls (Clayton, GA). Image courtesy of Corinne Foster Personal Collections.
TELL US YOUR CAMP MEMORIES!
We want to hear about your camp experiences! Inspired by these cards from 1950s camp log books, send us your memories and add to the Cashiers Historical Society’s growing collection of camp stories to help keep the archive of WNC Summer Camps alive.
WHERE DID YOU GO TO CAMP?
Visitors to the museum exhibit, “Campfires & the Embers of Youth” were asked to put a pin in the map where they spent their own camping days. Over the course of five months, visitors flagged their summer camps on a map of the United States. As the weeks and months passed, more and more pins were placed, showing the wider story of the American camping movement across geography and generations.
CHECK OUT THESE OTHER PAGES:
MUSEUM GALLERY + ACKNOWLEDGMENTS + ARCHIVAL IMAGES + Bibliography + CAMP SYMPOSIUM + EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS