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Camping Grounds narrates a quintessentially American tradition of sleeping outdoors, from the Civil War to the present, that will appeal to academics, outdoor enthusiasts, and general readers alike.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Public Nature
- Part One: 1850s-1880s
- Ch. 1. Saving the Union
- Ch. 2. Seeing the Country
- Part Two: 1890s-1940s
- Ch. 3. Tramp Style
- Ch. 4. Campers' Republic
- Part Three: 1950s-2010s
- Ch. 5. The Back to Nature Crowd
- ch. 6. Tents and Public Statements
- Epilogue: "We MUST Camp"
- Notes
- Index
About the author
Phoebe S.K. Young is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place.
Summary
An exploration of the hidden history of camping in American life that connects a familiar recreational pastime to camps for functional needs and political purposes.
Camping appears to be a simple proposition, a time-honored way of getting away from it all. Pack up the car and hit the road in search of a shady spot in the great outdoors. For a modest fee, reserve the basic infrastructure--a picnic table, a parking spot, and a place to build a fire. Pitch the tent and unroll the sleeping bags. Sit under the stars with friends or family and roast some marshmallows. This book reveals that, for all its appeal, the simplicity of camping is deceptive, its history and meanings far from obvious.
Why do some Americans find pleasure in sleeping outside, particularly when so many others, past and present, have had to do so for reasons other than recreation? Never only a vacation choice, camping has been something people do out of dire necessity and as a tactic of political protest. Yet the dominant interpretation of camping as a modern recreational ideal has obscured the connections to these other roles. A closer look at the history of camping since the Civil War reveals a deeper significance of this American tradition and its links to core beliefs about nature and national belonging.
Camping Grounds rediscovers unexpected and interwoven histories of sleeping outside. It uses extensive research to trace surprising links between veterans, tramps, John Muir, African American freedpeople, Indian communities, and early leisure campers in the nineteenth century; tin-can tourists, federal campground designers, Depression-era transients, family campers, backpacking enthusiasts, and political activists in the twentieth century; and the crisis of the unsheltered and the tent-based Occupy Movement in the twenty-first. These entwined stories show how Americans camp to claim a place in the American republic and why the outdoors is critical to how we relate to nature, the nation, and each other.
Additional text
A fascinating look at the role of camping in U.S. history that will prove insightful not only for readers interested in recreation and environmental history, but also those seeking nuanced histories of capitalism, political protest, environmental justice, labor, and more... Young elegantly incorporates complicated, interwoven histories into a clear narrative. She includes analyses of the complicated relationships between race and camping, especially for African Americans for whom, over time, camping has served variously as a means of self-emancipation, a site of exclusion from explicitly or implicitly segregated spaces, a tool for protest, and a form of recreation. Likewise, she demonstrates that the development of recreational camping depended on the removal and exclusion of Indigenous peoples from land.
