Camp Meenahga: 1916-1948
The 2016 exhibit in the Anderson Barn, Two Roads Diverged: Camp Meenahga and Camp Peninsular in Peninsula State Park, featured the history of Camp Meenahga for Girls and the Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Curator and Marketing Coordinator Emily Irwin submitted this blog to announce the exhibit. The blog was updated in 2024.
In 1915, two St. Louis women named Alice Orr Clark and Frances “Kidy” Woodward Mabley hatched a plan to open a girls’ camp in Door County. With help from thier friend Elizabeth Crunden who had a summer home on Cottage Row in Fish Creek, the women selected the Evenson farm in Peninsula State Park. Like most other farms and cottages within the new park, the Evenson farm had been purchased by the State of Wisconsin and was available for summer lease.
Camp Meenahga, circa 1929. Courtesy of Roy Gauger, Wisconsin Historical Society Press. The 100-foot Lodge/Evenson barn is left. The Lookout is right.
The farm - and soon Camp Meenahga - was along Shore Road about two miles from Peninsula Park’s Fish Creek entrance. With a west-facing shore and plenty of room for activitiest, it was the perfect location. Existing buildings were easily converted. The barn became the “One-Hundred-Foot Lodge” with a kitchen and dining room and, soon, a massive stone fireplace built by local craftsmen. The farm house became “The Cottage” where directors Clark and Mabley stayed. Several cow sheds were converted to cold storage buildings. Local workers were hired to construct of wooden platforms for canvas tents and, eventually a five-seater outhouse. Hubert Woerfel, a park carpenter, transformed a lime kiln along the shore into “The Lookout,” a gazebo-like structure that was a perfect place to watch sunsets.
Camp Meenahga opened in the summer of 1916 with the arrival of 30 girls, ages 12-20. By 1921, the number increased to 144 girls. Many came from St. Louis, but as the camp grew more popular campers arrived from Kentucky, Canada, New York and of course midwestern states like Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. Notable people who attended or worked at Camp Meenahga include Clark Clifford (U.S. Secretary of Defense), Adolpha Meyer (a WWII Angel of Bataan), the Turnbull twins (daughters of Andrew Turnbull, first president of the Green Bay Packers), and Edith Leopold (neice of Aldo Leopold). Door County names include Thade Cornils (Cornils Riding Academy, Ephraim) and Adeline Peil (Baileys Harbor), Peg Egan (Egan Performing Arts Center), and Libby Gould (EHF volunteer).
From the Lookout
The complete history of Camp Meenahga is told in From the Lookout: Memories of Peninsula State Park’s Summer Camp for Girls written by Kathleen Harris and published in 2020 by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. It includes a roster of names of most of the 2,000 girls who attended Camp Meenahga as well as many names of people who worked there.
