Boys Summer Camps of the Northeastern United States

Introduction | Literature Review| Data and Analysis | Conclusion| Sources | Storymap

For this project I researched the emergence of American summer camps, and how summer camps of the early 20th century can help researchers understand historical geographies of childhood. Particularly, I am focusing on how American summer camps were created to realize society’s idealizations of masculinity in young American boys. Examining the origins of these camps, their goals, how they’re structured, and their daily activities reveals the narratives surrounding masculinity and the ideal boy in the early 20th century. In turn, these narratives can unveil the social landscape of the early 20th century in terms of gender and race.

I focused on Northeastern summer camps since that’s where they originated and were the most popular. I also contained my research to the “traditional” summer sleep away camp provided to middle and upper class city children. It would interesting to expand on this project by including information on other summer camps that existed in this era such as nature camps for poor children, tutoring camps, camps for children with disabilities, and camps for sick children.