NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Park and Recreation Structures

BASIC SERVICE FACILITIES of a camp are those necessary structural items without which other construction, more apparently identified with the feeding, housing, and recreational pursuits of the campers, could not function properly and ought not to be undertaken. In large part these are the camp counterparts of the public utilities and services of any community. The camp office or administration building is in a sense the "town hall" of the camp village—the point of control. The fact that it is the first building reached on entering a properly planned camp will serve as the logic for discussing it before other structures.

Office space requirements in the typical camp are not great. The administration building should provide a private office for the camp director and an ante room with space for files and desk for a secretary or clerk. In very large and very completely staffed camps there may be need for office space for an assistant director, program director, and additional clerical help. Bookshelves, a storage closet for office supplies, and a public telephone booth might well be included. If not otherwise available within a short distance, a toilet and a drinking fountain should be provided. It is not good practice to combine living quarters and administrative space under one roof.

In a small camp the administrative function may be made a part of the dining lodge or the recreation building, but the kitchen noises of the one and the hub-bub of rainy day recreational activities of the other are likely to prove distracting.

It is logical to incorporate in the administration building the canteen, trading post, or camp store as it is variously called. The combination may be said to be usual. Since the camp store is customarily open only for scheduled short periods, its association with the administrative function makes it possible for one individual to assume the duties of storekeeper along with those of administrative clerk or secretary. Equipment of the camp store should include shelves, counters, and a storage closet lined with one-quarter-inch galvanized wire mesh or otherwise rodentproofed. The store will require only a small space unless the camp is of the family type, and food is sold to the campers. Even in such an instance the stock will not be extensive except in some unorthodox operation of a family camp in which, no point of central feeding being provided, every family might be expected to prepare all its own meals.

A VERY BASIC NEED in the organized camp is the combined hot shower house and laundry. It is necessary in all camps to provide facilities for hot showers with soap. A soap scrub while swimming is not a substitute. As one health authority has put it, "The swimming place is not a proper place for soap baths unless it is a fast running stream, and a fast running stream is not a proper place for swimming." Because of the great cost of installing and maintaining a supply of hot water at many widely scattered points, it is not considered necessary to provide these facilities in every group of cabins. It involves no great hardship for the camper to go to the administration unit daily to launder his clothing and his person. It is important, however, to locate the central shower house and laundry so that its distance from any cabin group does not belie the designation "central."

It is economically practical wherever possible to include separate showers and toilet rooms for the staff, for employes, and for visitors in the same building which houses the campers' showers and laundry facilities. This multiple functioning will further incline the camp planner to locate the hot shower and laundry building so that it will be readily convenient to the living and working quarters of staff members and employes. Since all these points are centrally, if properly, located with respect to the entire camp, the desirable central location for the shower and laundry building seems almost to be guaranteed.

Naturally, in very large camps or where conditions force distances between units greatly in excess of the ideal, it will be expedient to build more than one shower house. In family and co-recreational camps it will be necessary to have either two such buildings or one in which the required duplicating facilities are properly separated. The question whether to provide showers in private stalls or a battery of open showers for women and girls remains an open discussion, with the trend probably toward gang showers. Where it is concluded to provide open showers generally, it is suggested that one be enclosed with its private dressing room.

Showers should be provided in the ratio of one to eight or fewer campers. In figuring the number of showers, the largest number of campers in any one unit may be taken as a base, for it is possible to schedule the use of the showers so that but one unit uses them at a time. The floors of the shower room and dressing room should be of cement, compacted and troweled to a smooth, polished surface that can be kept spotlessly clean. A cement base six inches or eight inches high around these rooms will do much to retard the deterioration of walls of wood.

A disinfecting footbath, depressed in the cement floor within the doorway through which the bathers must pass in leaving the shower room, has a useful purpose. It does not function automatically, however, and where evidence of a fixed determination to keep the device clean and conditioned is lacking, it is perhaps as well to omit it entirely.

The shower and laundry building should have a hot water storage tank and heater of ample size, and should provide space for fuel storage. Tank, heater, and fuel supply are best housed in a separate room, in which supplies might also be kept; an alternative location is the laundry room.

A double laundry tub is probably sufficient equipment in the laundry of a camp occupied by restricted age groups. In a family camp, however, more laundering will be done by the campers, and two or three double trays will be required. If the men's and women's showers for a family camp are in separate buildings, the laundry equipment will be mainly useful in the women's shower building, although there will be purpose in installing one set of trays in the men's building, placed in a corner of the dressing room.

It is important to have shower and laundry buildings completely screened against insects.

A WASHHOUSE AND LATRINE building is an essential basic service facility for each group of sleeping cabins. Just as the hot shower house and laundry building should be central to the several cabin groups, so should the location of the unit washhouse and latrine avoid favoring some cabins to the disadvantage of other cabins of the unit. In children's camps no sleeping cabin should be more than 150 feet distant from the latrine. Even in camps serving adults a greater distance is objectionable, although sometimes unavoidable owing to site conditions and spacing for privacy.

By all means should a system of sanitation that provides flush toilets and a positive disposal of sewage by natural processes be adopted wherever possible. There is strong prejudice against sewage treatment by chemical processes alone due to the uncertainty of accurate control. The National Park Service Engineering Manual, Part 700— Sewage Disposal, will be found a valuable reference for its detailed consideration of sanitation with respect to parks and campsites.

In cases, and it is hoped these will be few, where flush toilets and a proper system of sewage disposal are out of the question for reasons of economy or other considerations, the alternative pit privies should be the best it is possible to devise, and be unremittingly maintained. When pit privies must be resorted to, these and the washhouse must be separate structures. Although flush toilets and facilities for washing, on the contrary, may be housed under one roof, it becomes necessary to have pit latrines of temporary character auxiliary to the flush toilet equipment of camps scheduled for winter use.

The combined washhouse and latrine serving a cabin group is desirably made a partially enclosed structure. One end is merely roofed over to shelter the wash basins or troughs, the other end is enclosed to house the toilets in stalls. It is well to devise a line of least resistance for the campers by adopting a plan arrangement that leads the campers past the wash basins or troughs as they leave the toilet stalls. A theory that campers will walk around the end of a building to clean up is not borne out by experience.

A concrete floor, or one of stone on concrete base, is important both for the washing "porch" and for the toilet stalls. A mere earth or gravel-filled floor surrounding the basins can become a most insanitary wallow when the sloshings and spurtings of exuberant youth on the loose are added to a normal splash and wastage of water. Ordinarily showers are not needed in the unit washhouse, if the central shower house equipment is of proper capacity. Cold showers only will be supplied in the unit washhouse, if showers are provided there at all.

An arrangement for washing in running water is the more desirable, because it is the more sanitary. Lavatories, or faucets in connection with a trough lavatory, should be in the ratio of one to eight campers. But this is a wasteful system, and if the water supply is limited or must be pumped at great cost, hand basins must sometimes be used for reasons of economy. A hand basin used in common can carry and spread infections and belongs in the same class with common drinking cup or common towel. In camps where water must be conserved, individual hand basins for every camper are the only tolerable substitute for running water.

Toilets should be provided in the ratio of one to ten campers. The privacy of toilet enclosure stalls equipped with doors is recommended. Urinals, if installed at all, should be a type that extends to the floor, because of the difficulty of keeping other types and their surroundings in a sanitary condition.

For camp units which house both sexes, it is of course obvious that the facilities here under discussion must be arranged differently than in the unit washhouse and latrine just described. Where flush toilets are possible, a single building will serve if the men's latrine and women's latrine sections are placed back-to-back and provided with entrances through wash "porches" placed at opposite ends of the building. With such an arrangement it is recommended that the wash basins or troughs be largely screened from view by lattice to afford more privacy. If toilets are of the pit privy type, two separate latrine structures are recommended, each with its detached, lattice-screened washhouse.

On the "must" list for all unit latrines or combined washhouse and latrine buildings is the complete insect screening of all toilet stalls. Particularly is it mandatory to screen effectively pit privy structures, to see to their maintenance in a clean and sanitary condition, and to resort to self-closing seat covers and any other devices which may be in the direction of preventing contamination being carried by flies, other insects, and animals.

THE INFIRMARY fills the need in every camp for a building in which to care for campers who become ill or injured or who may need isolation and rest. Its location should be removed far enough from the sleeping units and from points of noisy recreational activity to afford quiet, and near enough to the kitchen of the dining lodge to permit serving hot food from the kitchen to the infirmary conveniently. The structure should have a room which can be used as a dispensary where examinations may be made and minor injuries may be cared for. This dispensary or first aid room should be equipped with a sink, a closet, and shelves and cabinets for supplies and equipment.

There is seldom, if ever, need for a separate waiting room, for large groups of campers are practically never waiting for treatment. On the rare occasions when it may be necessary to have them come to the dispensary en masse for examination, they can await their turns out-of-doors. A bench or two on a porch outside the dispensary door will be useful in such situations.

Other space needs in the infirmary are a ward, an isolation room, a bathroom, and sleeping quarters for the doctor or nurse in charge. Recommended capacities are two beds for what has been termed the small camp, three for the medium-sized, and four for the large camp. In each case, the isolation room will accommodate one of these. It should be possible to place all beds, whether in a ward or in the isolation room, so that access may be had from both sides. Wards should be large enough to allow the spacing of beds with a distance of six feet between side rails and four feet between end rails. A plan arrangement that provides fairly direct entrance to the isolation room from the outside without the need to pass through any other rooms is always best.

The equipment of the bathroom will be the usual three fixtures—lavatory, toilet, and tub, a shower preferably over the tub. As it will be used by the doctor or nurse, and the patients as well, it is best to locate it centrally so that it is entered from a hall or passage.

The doctor's or nurse's sleeping room should contain not less than 100 square feet of floor area and should be supplied with a closet of ample size.

Important in the infirmary building are provisions for abundant sunlight and ventilation, a plentiful supply of hot water, some means for heating the rooms if conditions demand, and a positive screening throughout against insects.

Ideal arrangements for heating are a fireplace in the dispensary and a heater for the hot water tank so oversize that, when temperatures demand, this one source can also heat small hot water radiators in the ward and the isolation room. The hot water tank, heater, and fuel bin should be in a separate room, lined to be fire resistant and non-conductive of heat. A small door can be rigged in one wall of the heater room. This will permit taking advantage, in chilly weather, of the heat generated in the heater room. Preferably this would open into the hall or the bathroom.

VERY PATENTLY in the category of basic services or transplantations of urban utilities to the camp community are water supply, electric wiring, and incinerators. Drinking water should be brought to each of the units as well as to the administrative center. Bubblers should be installed at the unit washhouses and outdoor kitchens, and in the unit lodges if these and the outdoor kitchens are not joined. Bubblers are hardly short of essential, certainly very desirable, in the administration building, infirmary, recreation building, craft club, nature club, and the living quarters of staff members and employes. Water must, of course, be brought to the dining lodge, and will be a great convenience in the garage and for the washing out of garbage cans at the incinerator. Assuming flush toilets as equipment and one shower bath per camper per day as inescapable, a minimum of 50 gallons of water per camper per day is needed.

When electricity is within reach, the extent to which wiring should be provided in the organized camp is controversial. Few would argue to withhold its benefits from the administration unit, wherein it will lighten the kitchen tasks and constitute important equipment in the infirmary. Opinions differ as to whether it should be carried to the outlying units. While some would wire every building in camp as a matter of practical convenience, others would ban electricity from the units for the training and experience that campers acquire through contact with elemental processes. Overhead wiring is destructive of the illusion of wilderness; underground wiring, properly done, is expensive. It is the practice of young campers to retire early; this does not prevail among those camping as families. To generalize in arbitrary recommendation of flashlights or floodlights in the units would be foolhardy indeed. In each individual case the considerations cited, and others, deserve to be thoughtfully weighed.

The complete disposal of garbage and rubbish is mandatory in every camp, as in every other recreational area. The effective medium is an incinerator. Because the facilities serving camp and picnic ground are identical, the discussion and illustrations previously presented in the section "Incinertors" will not here be repeated. The proper location for the camp incinerator is one far enough distant from the campsite that the smoke and odors of combustion do not reach the camp. The direction of prevailing winds will be taken into account even though it results in the incinerator being less accessible. A small trash burner near the camp kitchen will be a convenience, and need not be an annoyance if used with discretion.

Another service structure desirable in a camp is a garage to shelter one or two cars and provide space for a workshop. Since this building does not differ from the garage built as a part of the service group on other recreational areas, it is unnecessary to repeat here verbal or graphic exposition of it. The camp garage can rate a classification as essential if it is made to serve a double purpose. It can be utilized for winter storage of equipment to include mattresses and bedding, if it is made rodent-proof; and if tightly built, it is a logical place for the fumigation of such equipment.

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