The 1994 Capital Campaign: Re-imagining Camp Craig

While all of the waterfronts got facelifts* thanks to the 1994 Capital Campaign, the Craig Waterfront was condemned and resurrected. The site below the dining hall had been deteriorating for years. It’s location on the channel left it more susceptible to damage and the original slabs were beyond repair. It was unsafe. And so, as part of the campaign, Craig Program Director Kerry Parker convinced Tom Willhite and Council Executive Ken Connelly to add a new waterfront to the campaign’s to-do list.

There was some debate over where the new waterfront would end up. However, after scouting (see what we did there) several locations with Perry Bruce and TVA sounding equipment, Parker lobbied for the backside of Duck Head as the best location. There was a lagoon there and the site was off the channel. From a purely functional perspective, it was a truly fantastic location.

In terms of the larger Craig program, it was terrible. The location was literally on the other side of the camp and there was nothing else over there. To compensate, Parker imagined a complete overhaul of Camp Craig. He envisioned a layout similar to Stahlman with the dining hall anchoring one end of the camp and the waterfront the other. Everything else would be moved in between. A new road would be cut from Duck Head into Camp Craig, connecting by the showerhouse on the upper loop. The Activity Yard would have to move from its location at the top of the lower loop. The Lower Loop itself would be shuttered and sites moved to the new road. A new showerhouse would need to be built as well, right at the junction of the new road and Craig Road. The Friday Night Campfire area would have to be moved too. The camp would flip and the complete transition would take years.

By the time the dust settled in 1995, the new waterfront had been built on the backside of Duck Head. The new road connecting Duck Head with the rest of the camp was built and immediately nicknamed “Parker’s Highway.” The two program sheds for the AY were built on Duck Head as well, though the program area itself stayed put in 1995.

And that was that. The new showerhouse never materialized. Craig was closed in 1996. Staff constructed a new campfire area in 1996 and 1997, but when Craig reopened in 1999, no one was still around who was aware of the big plan. The AY moved mainly because it had to, but the lower loop never flipped. Craig stayed the way it was with two program areas awkwardly out on Duck Head. Both have grown and thrived there in the years since, but the original plan never quite materialized the way it was supposed to have.

Nevertheless, the 1994 Capital Campaign gave Camp Craig an amazing new waterfront location that in turn led to a better Friday Night Campfire area (NOT on the Channel) and an area for the Activity Yard to stretch out and have room to play. Not a bad deal!

Seen here is Craig Waterfront on Duck Head its very summer in 1995.

• All of the waterfronts received overhauls. Most of this was structural and underwater, re-enforcing and covering the original concrete slabs. New sand beaches adorned the waterfronts and for the first time, debris bumpers–floating yellow tubes–were put in place to protect the waterfronts from debris from the lake. No longer would the docks be moved from the camp waterfront to Parnell Bay. They would stay put and never have to be moved again.