Camp Low Echo's Next Chapter

In the waning days of WWII, the Rogue Valley Girl Scouts Council decided that renting time at the Boy Scouts campground in southern Oregon wasn’t going to be a permanent solution.  In 1946 they negotiated a lease with what is now the Fremont-Winema National Forest for acreage at the southeastern tip of Lake of the Woods, in Klamath County, and set about planning to build what would become Camp Low Echo.  John Boyle, the famed hydroelectric engineer of the California Oregon Power Company (and father of two girls) laid out the campground and designed the main lodge.  The following year two groups of fathers set to work, one group set about dissembling a few buildings at Camp White, a US Army Cantonment, and the other using those salvaged materials (even the windows) to build a 40x100’ foot building facing the lake.  They got some other neat stuff from Camp White too, but more about that later.  The main lodge was later dedicated as “Beaver Lodge,” after the camp name of a scout leader.

For the next seven decades 1000s of girls spent their summers at Camp Low Echo, learning crafts, swimming in the lake, canoeing and spending time in the woods among friends.  It was a popular spot.  The Girl Scouts (aided by Kiwanis and Lions) built more buildings, cabins, fire-rings, and sleeping platforms, that allowed multiple groups to use the camp’s 30 acres.  None of these buildings, not even Beaver Lodge, were architectural wonders and most were built of donated materials, but they did what was needed, and for the summers, kept the bugs out and provided shelter.  When the snow fell, the uninsulated buildings were vacant, but their green metal roofs kept them dry until the next summer.

 

Scouting, for both boys and girls, is somewhat on the wane, as these traditional activities compete with sports, video games, and other things.  A few years ago the southern Oregon Girl Scouts Council, along with several other councils, were merged into a single statewide council based in Portland.  One of the first things that new body decided was that they had too much property.  Sadly, one of the facilities to be jettisoned was Camp Low Echo, ending any formal association between the scouts and the camp  In September of this year, after a deliberate process, the Forest Service lease for Camp Low Echo was transferred to a non-profit organization, which also purchased the Girl Scouts’ buildings with an eye toward a mixture of restoration, removal and new construction that will continue Camp Low Echo’s essential focus, while making improvements to allow the facility to operate year-round.

One thing that I expect to remain will be the luggage carts… a series of wooden boxes (now painted red) with 48” diameter steel rimmed wheels.  The scouts used them to lug sleeping bags and duffle bags from the parking area to the far reaches of the grounds (where cars can’t go).  What may not have been remembered is that these carts are also surplus from Camp White, where they began life as the garbage wagons.  I am thinking that Beaver and the other early leaders did some heavy cleaning before they were re-purposed!

The exact nature of the upcoming changes hasn’t been decided yet and for the moment exploration is on-going to evaluate the existing buildings and see how, and if, they can be upgraded to serve a year-round purpose.  Many were built of salvaged materials, often by well-meaning if not entirely skilled volunteer labor.  There are settlement and rot issues, and the accumulated impact of six decades of exposure with minimal maintenance.  And, of course, the expectations of Girl Scouts in July isn't the same as what you or I might expect in January.  What is clear is that Camp Low Echo has a distinctive style and a character that is formed by its buildings, but that character is also just as dependent on the layout and setting.  The use of materials and even the colors of the structures just scream “Camp.”  Whatever happens, I am pretty confident Camp Low Echo in 2014 is going to be easily recognizable as an evolution in what the Girls Scouts started six decades ago.  At least that’s the plan.

Camp White – Mission Appropriate

I have written before about the Camp White Station Hospital, in White City, Oregon.  It’s a sprawling 145-acre site that has 50+ buildings constructed in 1942 as part of the US Army’s training mission in the early days of World War II.  Since 1948 the Station Hospital, built of “permanent” construction, has been owned and operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, providing service to former members of the military.

 

Way back in 1948 the VA was opposed to taking over the Station Hospital for a variety of reasons but politics (in the form of Wayne Morse) won the day, and they have operated the facility ever since.  In recent years, as the “permanent” buildings of Camp White became older and ever-less consistent with the VA’s mission of quality service, the rub between history and function has grown.  To its credit, the VA has maintained, and modified, and upgraded the buildings as it is able, transforming some of these WWII behemoths (the buildings are HUGE) into state-of-the-art medical service facilities.  But in the past few years, as demand for veteran’s services grows, the deficiencies of Camp White’s buildings, no matter how historic, have become a greater obstacle to the VA’s primary care mission.  In 2009 we helped to create a Manual for Built Resources Blog that identified appropriate strategies for upgrades, but some aspects of the 1942 buildings just can’t be reasonably fixed.  Chief among those is the simple fact that most are made of Structural, or Hollow Clay Tile.  This once popular building method (it was both cheap and fireproof) was something akin to terra cotta Lego, but without the little interlocking buttons.  As you can imagine mortared and stacked blocks, held together by plaster on the inside and brick veneer on the outside (at least at Camp White) doesn’t perform particularly well in a seismic event.  Fixing that problem is usually accomplished by building a structural cage inside and then encasing everything in concrete, chewing up most of the interior space.  And interior space is already at a premium at Camp White as the VA attempts to fit vets into rooms designed more than fifty years ago for short term occupancy.

The bottom line is that the VA, after considerable thought, is in the process of removing about 30 historic buildings at Camp White to make way for new construction that is safe, efficient, and meets the needs of the population that they serve.  And let’s face it, for most of that population historic preservation is pretty far down the list of priorities.   So, on the one hand, the loss of a lot of buildings is a pretty sad, if entirely understandable, turn of events.  

But there is good news too.  First, of course, is that the VA will continue to provide quality services to America’s veterans in southern Oregon.  And the VA isn’t removing all of Camp White.  Many of the 1942-era structures, including several of the key properties like the Administration Building (the top photo), will remain in use, upgraded and modernized as needed under the Manual, for a long time to come.  And the VA has taken the character of its historic site to heart in the design of the new, replacement, buildings that it will construct after demolition.  Many will follow the military designs established in 1942, right down the pitch of the green asphalt roof and the brick veneer.  Check out the two buildings below…one is historic (and scheduled for removal and replacement) and the other was built last year.  Care to guess which is which?  And, if you have ever been to the “Dom,” (okay, Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center & Clinics) you know about the two-story hallways that connect almost the entire campus.  The hallways, whether original or rebuilt, will remain a part of the campus too.  

 I think if a solider that trained at Camp White, and had occasion to visit the Station Hospital during WWII, were to return for a visit in a few years when this is all completed, he’d feel right at home.  And the VA, for its part, will likely make sure through its continued support of the Camp White Historical Society, and maybe some interpretative signage, that others can also appreciate what’s so significant about the “The City in the Agate Desert” too.

Medford’s Summit-Fairmount Survey Update

Last Fall I reported on the beginning of this project, to survey an early residential neighborhood west of downtown Medford. Tama has been out taking photos, and in, entering data into the State’s MS-Access database.  Despite some minor glitches, she’s pretty much done, having documented more than 800 buildings built prior to 1964, some 65% of which are at this point considered potentially historically significant.

 It’s a great neighborhood, filled with all sorts of  hidden gems from Medford’s earlier days.  There are vernacular farmhouses, built before this was part of the city and before the land had been divided into blocks and lots (there are about ten additions plats in the survey area, including both Summit Addition to Medford and the Fairmount Addition, hence the name). 

After 1900, after the additions were platted, people started to build bungalows, and craftsmans, and what are termed “foursquares.”  And then, from after WWI, there is the occasional revival style, including some truly fine Spanish Colonial Revival…stucco buildings with red-tile detailing and arched windows.  And there are even a few rarities…. a “Prairie” style dwelling and the very rare (for the smaller-town PNW) Streamline Moderne residence.  Housing built after WWII includes dozens of small minimal-eave tracts, other buildings that were almost certainly relocated from Camp White, and finally the proverbial Ranch House.  It's a veritable treasure trove of nearly a century of American residential architecture, documenting Medford’s founding, boom, lulls and post-war explosion all in one easily walkable, nicely treed, gridded neighborhood.

We will be finishing up the data, drafting the summary report for the city, and moving this project forward over the next 30 days.  It will be interesting to see what happens next in Summit-Fairmount.  There are LOTS of possibilities.  It’s a great neighborhood, finally getting some recognition.

Camp White Revisited, Again

Beginning in 1990-1991, I have had a connection with Camp White, the WWII-era US Army cantonment that was built in the Agate Desert, north of Medford, Oregon.  Camp White was constructed in 1942 to train US infantry troops.  Covering more than 70 square miles, its 1400 buildings were mostly built of wood.  More than 100,000 troops were trained at the camp and the base was the second largest city in Oregon at the time.  100s of babies were born here, the valley’s first large contingent of African-Americans arrived, and there was even a German POW camp near the end of the fighting.  By 1946-47, most of the camp buildings were being dismantled for parts, or moved to serve as schools, churches, and other uses.  Not much remained.

The Camp White Station Hospital, however, was built of brick, what the local leaders of the time called “permanent construction.”  The Rogue Valley, for all its independent bluster discovered that having a major federal presence in the valley was good for business and, with the end of WWII they were loath to let it evaporate.  Medford and Jackson County used political muscle (in the form of Wayne Morse) to, um, convince a foot-dragging Veterans Administration that Camp White would make the perfect location for a veterans facility.  The VA, from the start, said the Camp White Station Hospital was too big, too remote, and would be too expensive to operate.

Fast forward to 1991, the 50^th Anniversary of WWII, and Camp White was celebrating almost a half century of service as the White City Veterans Administration Domiciliary, the “Dom” in local parlance.  Renamed Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center & Clinics, the Camp White Station Hospital and its lovely grounds continue to provide services to returned soldiers and the VA presence remains an important part of the valley.  The huge two-story brick buildings of the station hospital, most connected by an amazing series of internal hallways, are arrayed in military-like formation, neatly in rows and rows.

In the mid-1990s the Camp White Station Hospital was evaluated for historic significance in connection with an ODOT-funded widening of Highway 62.  Later the hospital was the subject of both a detailed survey of its 50+ structures and the development of a Manual for Built Resources.  Now, as the result of the Department of Veterans Affairs long-range plan to provide improved facilities at the site, we’re again in the process of the evaluating the resources at Camp White, determining which, if any, are individually eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.  Many will likely be replaced by newer, and more efficient, structures, still arrayed in the neat little rows that personify the camp.

In 1991, in Camp White: City in the Agate Desert, I wrote of the legacy of Camp White and the station hospital, really the only “built” elements of the camp that remain.  “Nothing so large, so monumental in scope, can be measured solely by its remnants, no matter how impressive.  The true heritage of Camp White is the change that it brought.”   That is still true, seventy years after the first construction at Camp White began.  We are just starting this new evaluation project at SORCC, but I think it's pretty likely that at least some of the hospital buildings are going to prove eligible for listing on the National Register.  Call it an educated guess.