The Entrance to Boxwell: More Kudzu

Here’s another post on the old hanging entrance sign. Just a little more on this and we’ll move on to something, we promise!

The sign here is after the 1972 Capital Development Campaign and the addition of Camp Craig. You can see the addition of a “Camp Edwin W. Craig” plank on the bottom of the sign. This is the way the entrance sign would look for approximately 20 years before it came down in the 1990s.

This photo also has one other point worthy of note. You can see that 1974–the year of the photo–was one of the years that an attempt was made to kill the kudzu on both sides of the road. If you’ve been out to camp recently, you’ve probably realized kudzu is an incredibly resilient plant!

The hanging entrance sign after the addition of Camp Craig.

The Entrance to Boxwell: Follow-up

Just a small follow up to Sunday’s post. Here is another, better photo of the hanging sign at the entrance to Boxwell. More importantly, it is an even better view of the crazy kudzu madness. Note that Camp Craig is not listed on the sign, so the kudzu growth here is all pre-1973.

More on the sign in the days to come!

Hanging Sign at the corner of Creighton Lane and Highway 109

The Entrance to Boxwell

The recent road-widening construction on Highway 109 forced Boxwell to move its current sign. This got us thinking about the old entrance into camp and some of the history there. So, this week, we look at the hanging sign.

The hanging sign was not at Boxwell when the current location first opened, but it came along pretty soon thereafter (more on that later). The sign was on one of several steep embankments. There was an embankment on each side of Creighton Lane as you turned in, and of course, one across Highway 109 that is still there today. When you turned into Boxwell coming north toward Gallatin, the hanging sign was on the right hand side of Creighton Lane, just like the current sign is.

Of course, these embankments were prone to heavy erosion when the rain, er, Boxwell dews came. So, as legend has it, Stahlman’s Con-Yard Director, a White County teacher by the name of Tom Parker had a solution: the sttaff would plant kudzu on the embankments. The invasive nature of the plant species was not yet understood in the States, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Boxwell Staff planted a LOT of kudzu over several summers–one plant about every foot! Indeed, planting kudzu was even an SL activity for both camps; no one was spared.

As you can see in this photo from about 1970, the kudzu has taken root, both under the sign and across the highway. It is already quite thick in this photo, leading to periodic attempts to kill it. None were wholly successful!

The original hanging sign entrance to Boxwell Reservation, ca. 1970.