If you had to guess, which would you say came first? Adventist summer youth camps or Adventist youth camp facilities?

If you guessed Adventist summer youth camps, you are correct.

Although the first youth summer camp in the United States—Gunnery Camp in Washington, Connecticut—dates back to 1861, during the years between the First and Second World Wars summer youth camps organized by both secular and religious groups become especially popular. In particular, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts organizations grew significantly in the 1920s and 1930s.

Missionary Volunteer (MV) leaders in the Adventist Church recognized the benefits of the Scout camp programs: outdoor recreation, nature classes, camping skills, personal growth, and social opportunities. But MV leaders were also concerned about the incompatibility of these camps with Adventist principles, the most obvious conflicts being Sabbath observance and dietary standards. Harriet Holt, junior secretary of the Missionary Volunteer Young People’s Society of the General Conference from 1920 to 1928, was the first to suggest that Adventists should organize their own youth summer camps. Grover R. Fattic, MV secretary of the East Michigan Conference, was the first to do something about it.

The First Adventist Summer Camps
In the mid-1920s, “Fattic took a scoutmaster’s training course,” and then persistently petitioned the East Michigan Conference executive committee (and perhaps the West Michigan Conference’s executive committee, too, as its MV secretary, Roy MacKenzie also assisted with the camp) until they agreed that he could organize a camp for the summer of 1926 provided it did not cost the conference anything. In the company of Lake Union MV Secretary Gordon Smith, Fattic combed the west side of Michigan, searching for a location. Working on the recommendation of a scoutmaster of Fattic’s acquaintance, the two men discovered a beautiful campground at Townline Lake near Lakeview, Michigan. This first camp hosted sixteen boys, ages twelve to fourteen, who were accommodated in tents. Its success led to plans for a larger Michigan camp in 1927 which would include girls. A wave of new Adventist junior summer camps —also called Missionary Volunteer training camps— soon swept across the United States.

For about the first twenty years, Adventist conferences did not own summer youth camp facilities. Instead, they rented them: any place in a good location ranging from county, regional, or state parks to YMCA camps was likely to be used. Generally, separate weeks were reserved for boys and girls in the late 1920s and early 1930s. By the mid-1930s, boys and girls were attending at the same time. By the 1940s, camps were divided into junior camps for pre-teens and senior camps for teens. This could vary from place to place depending on facilities and staff availability.

The first junior camp in the Central Union was limited to the Fort Scott, Kansas, church school. The school’s teacher, Mrs. Leonard Wood, and her students spent three days at Camp Wildwood on the Marmaton River, July 25-27, 1929, where they rented three cabins. Mr. Leonard Wood and Bert Rhoads assisted her.

The earliest known Colorado Conference junior camps were held at Glacier Lake, south of Ward, Colorado, in 1931 and 1932 under the leadership of George M. Mathews. In 1933 a camp specifically for juniors in San Luis Valley was held near Cumbres Pass, Colorado, and in 1934 Camp Juniorado was held near Evergreen, Colorado. But by far, the most common location for Colorado junior camps was a camp site in Pine Crest near Palmer Lake, Colorado. This central location, at a campground that apparently no longer exists, hosted camps in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1944, and 1947.

Pueblo Mountain Park
World War II brought changes to the summer camp program. Why the camp moved from Pine Crest to Pueblo Mountain Park near Buelah, Colorado, in 1941 is unknown. War-time rationing of gasoline and tires probably interfered with long distance travel. Thus, separate camps began to be held on the Eastern and Western slopes, although residents on either side of the Great Divide could choose to attend the opposite slope’s camp with a $1 discount to make up for the longer trip. The Western Slope camp met at Grand Mesa, while the Eastern Slope camp met at Pueblo Mountain Park in Beulah, Colorado.

Located in a Ponderosa pine forest on the side of a mountain above the little cove that is home to the community of Beulah, Pueblo Mountain Park possesses the atmosphere of a rural county or regional park although it is neither. The park was first developed in 1919 as part of a collaborative project of the the Pueblo Commerce Club and the City of Pueblo to provide outdoor recreational facilities in and adjacent to the San Isabel National Forest. Although located some twenty-seven miles southwest of the city, Pueblo Mountain Park is still maintained by the City of Pueblo. Park roads, trails, playgrounds, and campsites were constructed throughout the 1920s. In November 1935, the park became home to the South Creek (Mountain Park) Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp whose laborers significantly developed the park’s infrastructure. The CCC camp was followed by Works Progress Administration (WPA) crews who constructed, among other structures and stonework, the distinctive adobe Horseshoe Lodge. (read more about Pueblo Mountain Park’s history)

Horseshoe Lodge as it appeared in 2024.

Horseshoe Lodge, with its bunk rooms and dining hall, was one of the most attractive features of the park for an organized summer camp. However, the rural location would have also appealed to Adventist MV leaders. While Pine Crest was located near Colorado’s most densely populated metropolitan area, Pueblo Mountain Park was well off the beaten path. All roads in this tiny mountain cove on the edge of the Wet Mountain Range seemed to deadend against the mountains (which is true except for Colorado State Highway 78). Announcements for summer camps at Pueblo Mountain Park always included detailed directions for how to find it, nearly thirty miles southwest of the city of Pueblo. They also made the park sound like paradise:

Camp Beulah provides large, commodious dormitories which accommodate a total of about three hundred and fifty persons, a modern cafeteria, a rock chapel equipped with fire places, recreation ground with grandstand, volleyball grounds, horseshoe grounds, tennis courts, and ping-pong tables. There are miles and miles of gorgeous mountain trails and a lake that glistens like a diamond in the sunshine. A real thrill awaits you. (Central Union Reaper)

Youth from western Kansas were invited to the 1942 Eastern Slope camp. When Kansas Conference MV Secretary L. R Reiswig  encouraged Kansas youth to attend the camp in the Colorado mountains, he could not resist pointing out that “the advantages so afforded at this camp are not to be found in Kansas.” (Central Union Reaper) The cool mountain breezes whistling through the Ponderosa pines would certainly have been more refreshing than a hot summer day on the flat grasslands of western Kansas.

The 1943 junior camp was also held at Pueblo Mountain Park after which, as noted above, the 1944 camp returned to Pine Crest. No Colorado camps were advertised in the Central Union Reaper from 1945 to 1947, but this does not necessarily mean no camps were held. The primary method for recruiting campers was to send application forms to church MV leaders to distribute to the children and youth in their congregations. In 1948 and 1949, Grover R. Fattic now MV secretary for the Central Union organized union conference-wide senior MV camps at Pueblo Mountain Park. These camps were for youth and young adults ages sixteen to thirty-five. They were meant to provide both recreation and training for the MV program.

The camp in 1949 proved to be the last Adventist MV summer camp at Pueblo Mountain Park.

Camp Carlyle B. Haynes
In 1950, Pueblo Mountain Park was already reserved for camp and the dates had been announced for a third Central Union senior MV Camp, when the United States reinstituted the draft for military action in Korea. The General Conference Session, meeting in San Francisco from July 10 to 22, responded by reactivating the Medical Cadet Corps (MCC). They approved an MCC training camp to be held in the central United States. Fattic, now MV secretary of the Central Union, offered the reservation already made at Pueblo Mountain Park to the MCC. The MCC training camp, called Camp Haynes in honor of Seventh-day Adventist War Service Commission Secretary Carlyle B. Haynes, met from August 14-28, 1950.

Cadets drill on the baseball field at Pueblo Mountain Park in 1950.

The same baseball field in 2024.

This particular MCC training camp was important, not only because it reactivited the MCC for young Adventist men who might be drafted for service in Korea, but because it also implemented a revised program. During World War II, many aspects of the MCC varied from location to location throughout the United States. This was in part due to the restrictions of rationing (for instance, uniforms varied because it was difficult to obtain the same color and style across the nation). The larger reason that the MCC was not a unified program during World War II, however, was because its formation in the 1930s had come about piecemeal in several locations. It was not brought under the central control of the General Conference until 1939. This created a number of problems, including the idea among some administrators that they were entitled to officer commissions and ranks based on their church office. War Service Commission Secretary Carlyle B. Haynes and MCC Colonel (not a military rank or commission) Everett N. Dick were determined to see the MCC training start in 1950 with important changes.

Camp Haynes at Pueblo Mountain Park was superintended by Grover R. Fattic, who functioned as the business manager. Everett N. Dick and his subordinate MCC officers drilled the cadets, General Conference Medical Secretary Theodore R. Flaiz provided medical instruction, and Carlyle B. Haynes provided religious and moral instruction on doctrinal issues, including noncombatancy and the Sabbath. A standard uniform was established consisting of . Only men who trained at this camp were given MCC commissions and allowed to organize and teach MCC in their local conferences, churches, and schools. The standards for MCC officer ranks were also established so that MCC officers across the United States met the same qualifications regardless of the conference in which they worked.

Cadets listen as Dr. Flaiz delivers a medical lecture in a room in Horseshoe Lodge.

The 150 cadets, representing every union conference in the United States, who attended the camp were divided into two groups. Those with no prior MCC experience were in basic training. Those with prior MCC experience or who had already served in the United States military were enrolled in the officer track. The officer track served as a “refresher” which would enable these men to organize and train their own local corps in their communities when they returned home. Clark Smith of the Pacific Union Conference and one of Everett N. Dick’s subordinates, reported that the “the hours at the camp were long and there was a sense of urgency as our leaders drilled and studied that they might actually experience what they would teach.” (Pacific Union Recorder)

This was the first and only MCC camp held at Pueblo Mountain Park. In subsequent summers, MCC training camps were held at the Michigan Conference camp meeting grounds in Grand Ledge, Michigan.

The Beginning of a New Era

When Fattic announced the cancellation of the 1950 MV senior camp to make way for the Camp Haynes, he consoled disappointed campers with the assurance that “by another summer our own camp site in the Rockies will be ready for us.” (Central Union Reaper) The Colorado Conference had already purchased the Glacier View property in 1950, and by the summer of 1951 Glacier View Camp (now Glacier View Ranch) was ready to host youth for summer camp.