Cabin Camp 1 at Chopawamsic: A New Deal Camp in Prince William Forest Park

Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area, now part of Prince William Forest Park near Triangle, Virginia, was one of the National Park Service's New Deal Recreational Demonstration Areas (RDAs). The program turned underused farmland near cities into outdoor recreation areas. At Chopawamsic, 11,000 acres of small farms and an abandoned pyrite mine along Quantico Creek, in Prince William and Stafford counties, became a model recreation area with five cabin camps. They were meant for Washington, D.C., social service groups that ran group camps for underprivileged children.

The National Park Service built the group cabin camp facilities at Camp 1 with Civilian Conservation Corps labor in 1935–38.

A frame from the HABS laser-scan animation of the Camp 1 dining hall. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Rustic design

Camp 1's log and heavy-timber buildings are typical of the rustic National Park Service and Civilian Conservation Corps style of the 1930s:

• waney-edge siding, which keeps the irregular outline of the log, laid in vertical and horizontal sections;
• log posts and log-faced heavy timbers.

Like the other four camps, Camp 1 has a cluster of administrative buildings, a dining hall, infirmary, staff quarters, administration building, craft lodge, central washhouse and quarters for the help, plus several cabin units. Each unit had camper cabins, leader cabins, a latrine and a unit lodge. Camp 1's four units now have replacement cabins but keep their original site plan and unit lodges.

A camp for African American children

Camp 1 was notable as one of two Chopawamsic camps, with nearby Camp 4, set aside early on for African American campers. For many years it ran as Camp Lichtman, hosting groups of African American boys from the Twelfth Street YMCA in Washington, D.C.

That use wrote local segregation into the layout: the Black camps had separate entrances on the north side of the site, the white camps on the south. Yet Camp 1 also gave African American groups new facilities planned on the latest recreational principles, at a time when they had few options. By the 1960s it had become the coed, integrated Camp Goodwill, run by Family and Child Services of Washington, D.C.

Documenting the camp

A HABS measured drawing from the Camp 1 documentation. Image from the National Park Service's page.

In summer 2012 the Park Service's Heritage Documentation Programs completed full Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) documentation of Camp 1, sponsored by the National Capital Region.

A high-definition laser scanner captured the buildings for the drawings. As a by-product, Paul Davidson made an animation of the dining hall from about 10 scan stations, rendered in Pointools. The records are archived at the Library of Congress.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area - Cabin Camp 1 Virtual Visit": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cabin-camp-1-visit.htm
• HABS documentation at the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=%22HABS+VA-1494%22&fa=displayed%3Asurveys_only&sp=1&co=hh
• Laser-scan animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrVFH6FxU60