Landscape Forensics

A collection of vintage photos of Camp Crowell/Hilaka, provided by council historian Sunny Baddour, is now on line at http://www.flickr.com/photos/65282355@N00/sets/72157626948137609/ .  In reply to the announcement of this link on the Friends of Crowell/Hilaka mailing list, Kathleen Bradley wrote:

"I notice the trees on the dam got quite big in some years- not allowed anymore of course for safety reasons. The lake seems much lower in many of the pictures, too.  Most of the girls in the photos seemed older.  Do you think they were all campers or were some counselors?"

Lynn replies:

I don't know - that's part of the fun of looking at these- the more you look, the more you notice, and then the more you question.   It's like working a puzzle!  

I showed the series of Kirby House gardens to a friend who is very familiar with the camp.   After he stared at them a while, and flipping back & forth between them,  he pointed out that the one with the woman standing on the right was taken much later than the other three.  

How can he tell?   There is a small room added onto the back of Kirby House that isn't in the other,  and that reeds have grown up in the middle of the pond.

   Does this make a difference to anything?  Probably not --- but the act of figuring it out  - that's fun!   And I bet this kind of landscape forensics would be intersting to girls  if presented correctly. MOst of the time when I camped there with troops we were so busy with  our planned activities,  the kapers, the sight-seeing to obvious places, that we never thought to look.   But I bet there is a tremendous amount of history / mystery there, Mostly on the south,  but probably some lurking in the woods of the north.
      This spring,  Suzanne Czaplicki found and pointed out the remnants of garden architecure behind North House:  If you stand at the fire circle with the porch to your right, there is an almost hidden path on the left that goes down to the water.   A small creek feeds into the lake .    there are stone foundations on either side of the creek: there had been a bridge there at one time.   It must have been mostly decorative -- You can hop over the creek - but imagine the elegant & myserious Mrs. Neal strolling along this garden path.    I keep thinking that there had to be a boat landing around there somewhere.
      Suzanne also noticed that upstream of the creek is a bridge that is still there!    It goes over a culvert & connects North House lawn with the back of Spiff's Garden.  I have been told that the site of Spiff's Garden was, at one time, a clay tennis court.  The owner builder of Amity was the son of the owner/ builder of NOrth.  If so -the tennis court was right in the middle for both sets of families to use. Makes sense - as does the size & shape of the Garden.

     My current lanscape archeology pursuit concerns the possible existence of an ice house on the south side.   ONe of the things in the GSNEO history committee archives was a report that a girl wrote about the camp that meantioned an ice house. It's also on a map.  I can't remember if the girl drew the map or if the map was separate.   Anyway.  Both seem to indicate that the Nature Hut that hangs off the side f the hill was it.   Which can't be right.   
    First,  for those not familiar with an ice house  It's where people got blocks of ice in summer before freezers were invented.   It got filled during the winter when slabs of ice would be cut from a nearby pond.   The sides of the ice house were heavily insulated.  As layers of ice were stored,  layers on more insulating material ( like sawdust) would be packed around them. and between the layers.
    OK, so we got the pond.    We know that Kirby had electricty early on,  but the rest of Richfield did not. Kirby did not need the income from an ice business, but it might have been something he worked out with a neighbor. ( He also didn't need the income from a farm, but he had one anyway).  However : Ice is Heavy.   No one is going to haul it up a hill.  Also , the way the Nature hut hangs off the side ofthe hill, it is hardly insulated.  
    But -   just below the nature hut is a garage. The garage is set back INTO the hill and is on a level withthe road which runs right alongside the pond.    PLus, if you look at pictures of Kirby house, you can see that there used to be a garage underneath the back porch kinda by the giant oak tree.  You can look at the pattern of the brickwork and see that the original garage door opening was bricked in ( just like the one at Coach House).  
    THEORY ( ok, really hypothesis)   The original garage was the garage; and the current garage was originally an ice house.   This still does not explain the nature hut.  Laura G says she was told it was a house for a worker.   Couldn't have been Kirby's main farme manager, because that person lived in the Oviatt Farm house.   But it was something before it was a nature hut.  It's sitting there right in the middle of one of those vintage pictures.  Hmmmmmmmmmmmm..................