NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Park and Recreation Structures

CHIEF, and perhaps only, structures truly essential to the recreational and cultural program of camping are the accessories which contribute to safe swimming and indoor space for rainy day activities. Purposeful as are a campfire ring, craft shop or craft club, nature lore building or nature club, and water-front building, in the event of the omission of any or all of these, the unit lodge can take over many of their functions without the sacrifice of the major objectives of a worth while camp program.

As has been said, the unit lodge is the rallying point of a camp unit. It has recreational, social, educational, and cultural purpose. It is the common living room or clubroom of the campers who make up the unit, and if joined with an outdoor kitchen—a recommended practice—it can serve as their dining room as well.

In size the unit lodge should allow about 20 square feet for each camper of the group. A room 20 feet wide and 30 feet long has convenient proportions. As with most structures for campers' use, the fireplace is its most important feature and should be of generous size. Closet and cupboard space will be useful for the storage of equipment at all seasons.

For the bearing it has on construction details, thoughtful consideration should be given to the likelihood of winter use of a unit lodge. In that prospect, for instance, it is well to provide in the chimney an extra flue and thimble for connecting a stove for both cooking and auxiliary heating purposes. Projected winter use will also suggest a lower and flatter roof so that the lodge can be more easily heated. It will also lead to the substitution of glazed sash of limited extent in place of the more generous screened openings and batten winter closures recommended for unit lodges planned for summer use exclusively. For comfort in winter occupancy, the higher insulating value of a grade of construction better than required for strictly summer use is advisable.

If the full potentialities of the unit lodge are to be realized, a simple outdoor kitchen shelter, where meals can be prepared, must be erected nearby or, better still, attached to it. The latter arrangement permits one chimney to do double duty and will prove its superior convenience on rainy days. Experienced camping groups may essay to cook all their meals in the outdoor kitchen. Others may use it on occasion for practice cooking or the novelty of preparing a meal or two, on their own. When the camp is not entirely occupied, the outdoor kitchen combined with the unit lodge functioning as a dining room makes possible and practical the operating of units as independent camps accommodating small groups.

It is recommended that the kitchen, if joined to the unit lodge, be open on three sides; if entirely detached, then open on all four sides. The stove should be of masonry of the campstove pattern, built integrally with the masonry chimney. Its iron top, preferably a casting, should be solid, from front to its intersection with the face of the chimney, and should be at a convenient working height. Grills and any perforations or openings in the stove top which would allow smoke to collect within the shelter are to be avoided, likewise removable lids like those of a coal range, which are too easily mislaid or otherwise lost. Control of draft either by a damper in the flue or by a readily adjustable fueling door should be provided.

Needed structural equipment for the outdoor kitchen further includes cupboards for storing utensils and dishes, an ice box, and storage place for food protected against animals and insects. Drinking water should be available at a bubbler and also at a tap where pails and other vessels may be filled.

Generally speaking, the small recreational building of each cabin colony in the form of the unit lodge, as described, will eliminate the need for a large recreation building in the administrative group. Particularly is this true if the dining lodge is readily convertible and roomy enough for mass recreational activity, and if not too many such demands are made on it. Without the network of unit lodges to take the brunt of enforced indoor activity in bad weather, the taking over of the dining lodge for every minor indoor recreational need would indeed be a disruptive practice, and a central recreation building would become a necessity. While in a choice between a chain of unit lodges and a central recreation building, the former is thought to be better camping practice, some camp planners, for good and sufficient reasons (lack of funds probably a potent first), will elect to build the central facility instead. It should not be assumed that a camp having both a central recreation building and a chain of supplementing unit recreation buildings is necessarily ideally equipped—too many facilities for indoor events may interfere with the realization of a desirably complete outdoor program.

The ideal, if seldom economically supportable, central recreation building will allow from 15 to 20 square feet per camper. It will feature a generous fireplace, perhaps more than one. The main recreation room will have a portable or permanent stage for amateur entertainments and will be arranged so that dressing rooms, if not actually a part of the building, can be supplied by tents temporarily erected outside advantageously located stage exits and entrances. A wide veranda will contribute greatly to the general usefulness of the structure, and an alcove or separate room for reading and writing, equipped with bookshelves and writing tables, will be another important element. The main recreation room will have tables for ping-pong and other games, and benches and other seating furniture suitable to its varied uses. Ample storage space for equipment items that need to be stowed away when the building is appropriated for special events will not be overlooked.

IT CANNOT BE DENIED, with swimming almost the reason for being of most camps, that insuring safety in the water-front area, insofar as lay-out and structural appurtenances can effect this, is the first and foremost demand upon planners of camp recreational facilities. Stating objectives broadly, waterfront development should create a confined, safe operating range for beginners and nonswimmers, facilitate their instruction, and provide for the more varied, less restricted, but still safeguarded, activities of experienced swimmers.

Probably the ideal development of a swimming beach is an H-shaped dock, the upright strokes of the letter at right angles to the shore line. Within the shoreward hollow of the H, beginners' flounderings and founderings are confined, and instruction is given. Herein the water should not exceed a depth of four feet. The outer hollow is the sports arena of the true swimmers, and within this area the water is desirably not over seven feet deep. At the ends of the piers the diving boards are installed, where, for high diving, water nine feet deep is necessary.

The many advantages in the H-dock will be quickly sensed. Not the least of these are definitely prescribed limits of water-front for swimming activities which tend to restrain the rash and unwary from venturing beyond the bounds of rescue. Another very real advantage is that boats, where boating is also a camp activity, may be moored outside the piers and kept completely away from the swimmers. The operation of boats within swimming areas, irrespective of the skill and cautiousness of the operators, is a hazard which will not be tolerated in a well-supervised camp.

There are other forms for the swimming dock— T-shaped, L-shaped, and others, but none scores with so many telling advantages as does the H-plan. Regardless of the form adopted, the construction of the dock should be such that there is no chance for campers, diving or swimming under water, to be trapped beneath it. This may be accomplished, where the water level is not widely fluctuating, by building the dock level high enough above the water level to insure "breathing space" between them at all times. Elsewhere barriers of wood piling, heavy wire fencing, or something equally effective, to keep swimmers from getting under the dock, become a necessary part of the substructure and should extend to the bottom. The substructure should be of substantial construction which anticipates and gives promise of surviving ice conditions of the locality. The timbers under water should be heavily creosoted.

There are water-front situations in which a sharply sloping beach, mucky bottom, swift current, or other unfavorable condition will dictate the building of a swimming crib—a floating swimming pool—for the instruction of beginners. The crib is of cross-planked cratelike construction, the spaces between the planks permitting active circulation of water yet narrow enough that there is no chance of a foot getting between the planks and being wedged there. Pockets built in the ends of the crib, weighted with rocks, make it possible to float the crib at the desired level. By building it in sections, bolted together, a crib 80 feet long and 35 feet wide is practicable. Structural members, of course, must be scaled to its over-all size and to affecting conditions such as current and ice conditions. Damage by the latter can only be effectively circumvented where winters are so truly mild that ice normally occurring qualifies as a film rather than anything more formidable. Projected for cold climates, the crib should be so contrived that its superstructure can be readily removed in sections and hauled ashore for the winter months, and the substructure prayerfully weighted down in deep water in the hope it may escape damage by ice. Crib construction should have the preservative benefits of thorough creosoting for submerged parts and painting for the parts above water.

The provision of diving boards is nothing to be undertaken in an offhand manner. There are definite and easily obtained standards for this equipment item governing the pitch and overhang of the board, its dimensions, distance above the water, the clamping device, and other equally important details. Experimental and makeshift departures from generally accepted diving board standards are unwarranted, even dangerous. It is decidedly unfair to campers bent on learning to do something well, to start them off disadvantaged by nonconforming equipment.

The only satisfactory location for diving boards is a fixed structure. Diving boards on floats are hazardous. The behavior of a float in rough weather is unpredictable, and painful accidents to divers can result. It is also possible for a swimmer to come up under a float and be trapped there. In consequence, even though it becomes necessary to resort to a rock crib construction, diving boards should be on fixed structures.

There are a number of water-front accessories, minor as structures, but important to the safety of the swimming area. One is an elevated seat from which a guard can observe all swimmers and quickly speed to the rescue of any who get into difficulties. Other items are rescue and safety equipment always life rings hanging on racks ready for instant use, life lines, and resting floats, and, if the site conditions warrant, life boats. There should be no shortage of ladders up which to climb from the water to the dock. Trivial structurally as ladders are, the scarce provision of them in many outdoor swimming set-ups is shocking. Wherever swimmers must tread water awaiting their turns to clamor up a ladder, the planning of facilities is under the cloud of criminal negligence.

Where there is neither lake nor dammed stream to afford swimming for the organized camp, the man-made formal swimming pool is the alternative to be undertaken. It will differ not at all from the swimming pool in any outdoor location, thorough information on which is available from so many sources that there is no obligation to discuss it here. Let it suffice here to urge upon camp planners that, where the swimming pool is a required structure, the most authoritative recommendations be not slighted.

CONSIDERATION of camp recreational and cultural structures and facilities now tapers off to embrace those generally held desirable but less than essential. The recreation building in the administrative group has been mentioned as thus classifiable except when, by reason of the omission of recreational facilities from the units, it becomes a truly essential structure.

In the typical organized camp, dressing for swimming can be done in the sleeping cabins, and no water-front construction in provision of dressing rooms is considered to be necessary. There will only be purpose in a water-front building if boating is a camp activity. Then it will be a boat storage building divorced from the bathing area. It will be sized to berth the boats belonging to the camp and will have storage space for paddles, oars, and such accessory boating gear. Perhaps it will have an incline to the water, with cleats for a foothold in hauling in boats. In some instances a landing pier adjoining the boathouse may be desirable. The water-front building may advantageously include winter storage space for some of the bathing beach equipment such as life rings and resting floats. It is a structure that cannot be reduced to a typical lay-out, being affected more than any other camp building by special considerations of site and program. Foundations that will withstand severe ice conditions are important.

Naturally, if the facility for swimming is a treated pool, preparatory shower baths will be required of all who enter it. In that situation the central shower house will logically be located near the swimming pool, its size increased to provide a roomier dressing space and more shower heads.

WORK IN THE CRAFTS is an activity in organized camps of all kinds. With some campers craft interest is merely a rainy day matter; with those of creative bent it is a thrilling pursuit that cannot be made to wait on unfavorable weather. The structure which houses these activities is termed a craft shop, or craft club, and among the interests possible are carpentry, leather work, the graphic arts, metal work, weaving, printing, and photography. The building is normally a simple structure with plenty of light a first requirement. Its equipment will include work benches and tables, shelves, cupboards, even individual lockers for tools, materials, and work in progress. A sink with running water is necessary; a fireplace is desirable. The variety of the craft program will dictate the extent of the other equipment, but a loom, a small forge, a photographic dark room, a potter's wheel, and a small printing press are among the many possibilities. It is recommended that the craft and nature buildings be located in the same general vicinity but not joined under one roof. The often noisy and untidy creative activities will be likely to disturb the more contemplative research of the nature groups.

It has been found to be good practice to place the craft and nature buildings so that they will be passed by the campers in the day's routine travel. Young people, particularly, will not be inclined to seek out these facilities when located off the beaten track, yet their indifference can be broken down, and an enthusiasm can be created, if they are given opportunities for frequent and casual observation of the interest of fellow campers in craft and nature hobbies.

WHAT IT IS CHOSEN herein to christen the nature club is a facility long-provided and variously designated in camps. The terms "museum" and nature museum somehow suggest eternally suspended animation, whereas the place, functioning as it should, is one of lively activity. "Nature lore building" seems to carry threat of an innocuous bedtime story approach to the facts of Nature from which sophisticated modern youth will instinctively back away, and more power to him! "Nature hall" has scholastic and World's Fair connotations which make this term not exactly fitting. These names and less used others for one or another reason seeming less than apt, it is here elected to send up a trial balloon for "nature club" as suitably descriptive.

It is the rendezvous of the nature-minded, present and potential, among the campers. It may contain permanent collections of natural objects identified with the locality, but its more important purpose is to serve as a working museum a combination laboratory-classroom-library for the campers of an inquiring turn of mind in the realm of Nature. Structurally, it will probably consist of a large exhibition-workroom and a small office-laboratory for the nature counselor in charge. It will be well lighted and equipped with shelves and cases for display, work tables, bookshelves, cupboards for storage, and a sink with running water. Very desirably a wild flower garden, perhaps a vivarium or aquarium, will adjoin it, and it will be the starting point of a nature trail. The building will be expressive of its purpose if it is linked with the out-of-doors by large openings that give vistas into the surroundings and by the use of materials patently native to the locality.

THE COUNCIL CIRCLE, or council ring, only fails of classification as essential in organized camps, for the reason that, in the initial absence of any such facility, persistent need will eventually bring into being a makeshift substitute. The makeshift may serve very well, or not, depending on terrain and other considerations of locale.

The ideal camp council circle will be remote from the camp, at least 1,000 feet from the nearest building. It will be in a secluded spot, wooded if possible, without distracting vistas, and free of disturbing influences. The location must be such that a cleared circular plot, smooth and practically level, of 24- to 30-foot diameter, can be ringed in by the front row of seats. Seating will be benches with low backs. When there is need for a second and third row of seats, each should be elevated slightly above the row immediately in front. The leader's seat, as the focal point, may well be differentiated from the general seating by a higher back. It is fine if a large tree or rock can furnish a background. Entrances through the ring of seats should be few, preferably not more than two or three. The council circle of the organized camp differs from what is termed in some campgrounds a campfire circle, in that it lacks a pit or a fixed hearth ring of stones for the campfire. The enclosed space accommodates a campfire, of course, but is free of any construction which might interfere with the games, stunts, and rituals of the organized campers.

Success has not rewarded a search for a photograph of a council ring on the structural lines just described. Perhaps, after all, the council ring is what one camping expert, to whom appeal for a photograph was made, described it to be: "a group of people bound together by bonds of interest and appreciation around a fire" something of the spirit rather than of structure. And if this is true, the tailpiece illustration, as the sole example here pictured, ably represents this facility.

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