50 Fun Facts About Camp

The first organised US summer camp is usually credited to a camp founded in 1861 in which state?

Frederick W. Gunn ran it for schoolboys as a fortnight of outdoor living, and the idea took thirty years to spread.

How many camps did the American Camp Association count in the United States in 2024?

Enrolment has been drifting down for years, blamed on smaller families and the rise of summer tutoring programmes.

In 1900 there were fewer than 100 camps in the United States. How many were running by 1918?

Girls' camps had only begun appearing around 1900, most of them clustered in New England.

In the US and Canada, residential places where children stay overnight are known as what?

For many children it is the first extended stretch of time they have ever spent away from home.

What three things make up a s'more?

The name is a contraction of 'some more', and its ancestor was a buttered marshmallow on a saltine called the Marshmallow Marguerite.

Which organisation printed the earliest known recipe for the treat, in 1927?

Newspapers had described their members eating 'Some-mores' as early as 1925, in Connecticut.

The word marshmallow comes from a plant that grows where?

Althaea officinalis was used by ancient Egyptians to soothe coughs and sore throats long before anyone thought of toasting it.

Which four ingredients make up a modern marshmallow?

Alex Doumak's 1956 extrusion patent, squeezing the mixture out as a long rope, is what made mass production possible.

Who patented the extrusion process that turned marshmallow-making into a factory job?

Before that, marshmallow was poured into starch moulds one shape at a time, which capped output badly.

What is the safest place to build a campfire?

Where none exists, bare rock or unvegetated ground works, and turf can be lifted and replaced once the ashes are cold.

What is the correct way to put out a campfire?

Checking for live embers matters more than the first bucket: a fire that looks dead can smoulder in the duff for hours.

In fire-building, what is 'tinder'?

Birch bark, cedar bark, fatwood and dead pine needles all work; before matches, the standard was amadou struck with flint and steel.

Which chemical in poison ivy sap causes the rash?

Between 15 and 25 per cent of people have no reaction at all, though repeat exposure usually makes things worse rather than better.

Poison ivy leaves grow in clusters of how many leaflets?

The plant is a shape-shifter otherwise, growing as ground cover, shrub or climbing vine depending on where it takes hold.

Smokey Bear's original 1944 slogan promised that care would prevent what?

The famous 'Only YOU' line arrived in 1947 and lasted until 2001, when 'forest fires' became 'wildfires'.

In 2001 Smokey's warning was updated to name what instead?

The point was to cover grass and scrub country too, and to make clear the campaign was not against controlled burns.

What was Smokey doing in his first 1944 poster?

The artist Albert Staehle dressed him in jeans and a campaign hat, and 9 August is still counted as the character's birthday.

How many principles does the Leave No Trace outdoor ethic have?

The list started at 75 in the early 1990s, collapsed to six, and only settled at its final count in 1999.

Which campfire song is an African-American spiritual whose title means 'come by here'?

The first known recording, made in 1926, is an unaccompanied tenor singing in Gullah, identified only as H. Wylie.

In which year was the first known recording of that spiritual made?

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon collected it; the two oldest datable versions both sit in the Library of Congress.

Where was the first experimental Scout camp held, in 1907?

Robert Baden-Powell ran it while writing the book that would launch the whole movement.

Camp Fire, founded in 1910, was set up as the sister organisation to what?

It was the first nonsectarian, multicultural organisation for girls in America, and admitted boys from 1975.

Which country's soldiers bought 60,000 Euklisia Rugs, the 1876 ancestor of the sleeping bag?

The Welsh mail-order pioneer Pryce Pryce-Jones designed it with a built-in pocket for an inflatable pillow.

What holds up a large tent when there is nothing to pitch it against?

Sizes run from a bivouac barely big enough to sleep in up to circus tents seating thousands.

Historically, canoes were built as dugouts or from what?

Canvas on wood came next, then aluminium, and now most hulls are moulded plastic or composites like fibreglass and kevlar.

What did 19th-century French confectioners call the whipped mallow-root sweet?

It was whipped from dried mallow root with sugar, water and egg whites, and sold as a spongy dessert.

Which mosquitoes bite people?

Every mosquito drinks nectar; only the females have mouthparts built to pierce skin, and that is how diseases move.

How many stages are there in a mosquito's life cycle?

The larvae are a major food source for dragonfly nymphs and fish, which is one argument against draining every pond in sight.

A Dutch oven used over coals is usually made of what?

American versions gained legs to stand over the coals and a flanged lid to hold more on top, a design credited to Paul Revere.

Who is credited with adding legs and a ridged lid to the American camp pot?

The ridge keeps hot coals sitting on the lid instead of sliding into the stew.

The campfire story belongs to which tradition?

Many of the standards are decades old and mutate between cultures, which is why no two cabins tell the same version.

Besides warmth and cooking, what practical job does a campfire do?

It also works as a beacon, which is why a lost hiker is told to build one rather than keep walking.

What proportion of people have no allergic reaction to poison ivy's oil at all?

Being one of them is no guarantee: sensitivity can develop with heavier or repeated exposure.

What was the s'more's early-20th-century ancestor called?

It was buttered marshmallow on a saltine, served with hot chocolate or tea, and popularised by Boston Cooking School books.

By what year were newspapers already reporting American 'marshmallow parties' with roasting?

The New York Times was covering the fad two decades before the layered campfire version got its contracted name.

Which non-profit formed in 1994 to teach the ethic and settle its principles?

The National Park Service, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management had already been training specialists in minimal-impact camping.

Which US agencies jointly published the 1987 pamphlet that first set out the ethic?

It was the first joint attempt to put the ethic on paper, seven years before the non-profit existed.

One of the longest-running science camps, the International Astronomical Youth Camp, began in which year?

It has since run in 15 countries and hosted participants from 81 nationalities.

What is the name for a camp whose children go home every night?

Plenty of places run both at once, mixing children who sleep in cabins with those collected at six o'clock.

Before matches and lighters, which fungus-derived material was the tinder of choice?

It was used next to flint and steel; modern campers cheat with steel wool or cotton dipped in petroleum jelly.

Allan Sherman's 1963 lament 'Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh' borrows its tune from which composer?

The melody is the Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda. The song about Camp Granada reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy.

Artek, the famous Soviet Young Pioneer camp founded in 1925, sits on which peninsula?

Artek lies on the Black Sea at Gurzuf near Ayu-Dag. Between 1925 and 1969 it hosted 300,000 children, including more than 13,000 from 70 foreign countries.

Which Union general arranged 'Taps', the lights-out bugle call heard at many camps, in July 1862?

He wrote it at Harrison's Landing, Virginia, to replace the French call used for lights out, and the tune is sometimes called Butterfield's Lullaby.

Most early 1960s tie-dye shirts were made with which brand of household dye?

The psychedelic craze took off in the late 1960s after rock stars such as Janis Joplin and John Sebastian wore tie-dye; Sebastian did his own dyeing.

Orienteering, the map-and-compass sport, originated in which country in the late 19th century?

The term 'orientering' was first used in 1886 at the Military Academy Karlberg. The first civilian public competition was held in Norway in 1897.

Karl Elsener began making soldiers' knives in 1891 at a business that grew into which company?

Elsener's firm in Ibach originally made surgical equipment. Rival Wenger was folded into the company in 2013, and the two logos differ by shield versus rounded square.

In the 1979 comedy Meatballs, Bill Murray's counsellor Tripper works at which cut-rate place?

It was Murray's first starring film role and launched the directing career of Ivan Reitman. North Star's wealthy rival across the lake is Camp Mohawk.

In the 1998 film The Parent Trap, the twins meet at a summer camp in which US state?

The film was Lindsay Lohan's debut in a dual role. It remakes the 1961 film and adapts Erich Kästner's 1949 German novel Lisa and Lottie.

Friendship bracelets took off in the 1980s after protests over disappearances in which country?

Most designs are built from the same simple half-hitch knot. The smallest pattern, a double chain, needs just two strings.

The Pesse canoe, dated to about 8000 BC and the oldest known boat, was found in which country?

The dugout dates to 8200-7600 BC. The English word canoe is thought to come from 'canoa', the Caribbean term recorded in Columbus's 1493 travelogues.