S'mores, Scouts and Summer Camp

      Anyone remember the taste of a campfire s’more? The taste of a gooey, slightly burnt marshmallow and melted rich Hershey’s chocolate nestled between two graham cracker squares as the flavors hit the tongue? Take a bite and rich sweetness oozed out the other side. I sure remember and I remember where I first tasted the treat that can send me back to my childhood with one bite.

     I spent parts of three summers at Camp Welaka, the Girl Scout Camp nestled next to the Village of Tequesta and Jonathan Dickenson State Park just over the Palm Beach/Martin County line.  These days, it’s a simple drive through a nice residential area to reach the camp gates. In the 1960s, the drive took a long time as we headed into what appeared to me to be total wilderness. I was excited to finally see the two pine trees that framed the road into camp. A wooden sign over the road declared that this was “Camp Welaka.”  “Welaka” means “Chain of Lakes” in Seminole and was the final choice of several suggested names for the camp. Generations of grown up Girl Scouts still smile whenever they hear that name.

We lived for letters from
home--even if home was
only fifteen minutes away!

     During my weeks at camp, the girls in my unit hiked, worked feverishly on crafts with yarn, popsicle sticks, paints and plaster-of-paris.  In the evenings, we gathered around campfires to sing songs like “Make New Friends (But Keep the Old)” in rounds.  With the pungent smell of mosquito repellent and suntan lotion in a thick cloud around us as we sang, we sat close enough to feel the heat on sun kissed faces and toasted our marshmallows on saw palmetto stems cut and carved to a sharp point. We cleaned up in open air showers, wooden walls for privacy and the often cold water helped wake us up.  We swam and took swimming lessons in the man-made lake safely within the three-sided dock complete with lifeguard stands. We piled into vans and headed over to Jupiter Beach to tip toe down the coast, flashlights unneeded in our hands in the bright moonlight as we hunted for turtles laying eggs and stood silently in wonder when we found one.

One of the more pleasant
visitors to our tent.

      The last year I camped there, we learned everything anyone could ever know about canoe safely in preparation of the big trip down the Loxahatchee River across the Jupiter Inlet that only the oldest girls took each summer.

       Girl Scouts came to the area long before my involvement. In a wonderful (but now out of print) book titled, Footprints in Time, author Claudet Benton, herself once a Girl Scout, fills us in on the story.  According to Claudet, it was January 1920 when the president of the national Girl Scouts “called a meeting at the Women’s Club on Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach to organize Girl Scouting in the Palm Beaches.” That meeting was followed by a national charter issued on May 5, 1920 which was the first in Florida. The initial troop had 47 teenage girls as members. 

       Claudet states that Camp Welaka itself is actually the third, and most successful of the Girl Scout camps in northern Palm Beach County. The first, Camp Schaum-a-Hatchee, was in the same area, but was destroyed by the hurricane of 1928 shortly after the first, and only, camp session.  It was followed by Camp Margery Daniels on the same property on the Loxahatchee. That camp was open from 1929 until 1935, when it closed due to the aftereffects of the Great Depression.  Soon thereafter, funds were raised and camp re-opened and stayed open until it property had to be expanded in 1939 to handle all of the Scouts who wanted to camp.  After closing briefly in 1946 during a polio scare, the Camp remained open until 1958 when “The New Site,” now known as “Camp Welaka,” opened for campers. 

          Meals not cooked over a campfire were and are served family style to campers sitting at large wooden tables in the main lodges. There is a stone fireplace in the room made with stones salvaged from the fireplace at Camp Margery Daniels. Over the fireplace is a polished metal plaque mounted to the wall that carries this inscription:

“I have given you shelter only. For the atmosphere and spirit which will prevail here you will be responsible. If you would make me happy bring from the woods the loveliest of flowers and shrubs and surround your camp with the beauty of growing things. Margery Daniels”

       Ten years ago, I sent my daughter to Camp Welaka and once again my feet touched the wooden  floor boards of the main lodge. The path to the camp has changed in the intervening years and the area surrounding the once remote main gate now has homes in all directions. But when I picked my daughter up from her week at camp and stood with her in a song circle next to the flag post at the main lodge, my mind took a leap into the past. If I had not been holding her small hand in mine, it could have been 1967 all over again.

There’s a good reason Girl Scouts continue to exist and continue to gather at Camp Welaka. The women who started this whole thing in Florida in 1920 saw the future and made it happen. Then, as now, girls head into the woods to learn all of those wonderful things about nature that we tend not to notice as we hurry about our day-to-day lives.

August 30 is National Marshmallow Day.  I’ve got some marshmallows. Who’s up for a s’more? 

Copyright (c) 2012 Ruth Hartman Berge

This article first appeared as the August "The Florida You Don't Know" column with Seabreeze Publications, Inc. 

The Intra.... what??

Intracoastal at Jupiter Bridge Looking North 2012

Have you ever been stuck when a drawbridge went up so a tall sailboat could pass by?

If you were in eastern Florida at the time, you were likely waiting at a bridge crossing the Intracoastal.

 

Running inside the East coast of Florida is something at various times called, “the innercoastal,” “the intercoastal” and even the “entercoastal” once. It’s actually the Intracoastal Waterway and any time someone heads to the beach on the east coast of the entire state of Florida, he’ll pass over it.

When I was a child sailing up and down the Intracoastal in my dad’s boat, I thought nothing of it. It appeared to be just a river to me. When I spent the summer at Camp Welaka in Tequesta and the Girl Scouts paddled canoes down a branch of the Loxahatchee River to connect the Intracoastal, it never occurred to me that the sides were awfully straight in some places. (Frankly, by the time we hit the Intracoastal from the Loxahatchee, we were just grateful we had almost reached a landing point again. That river is long!) It’s kind of close to the ocean, but a river nevertheless. I was right and I was wrong.

The Intracoastal Waterway does have several natural rivers and inlets along it, but they are connected by man-made, dredged thoroughfares of water.

Seriously.

 

 

Intracoastal Looking South from the Jupiter Bridge

For anyone who takes the time to look at the river banks, it becomes obvious that the sides are too straight in some locations to be natural. Started in 1883 by the Coast Line Canal & Transportation Company, in cahoots with the State of Florida, it was completed from Jacksonville to Miami in 1912.  The man most hold responsible for the development of the East Coast of Florida, Henry Flagler, became associated with the company in 1895. He apparently viewed it as a vehicle to help extend his railway down the state.

Before the completion of the Intracoastal Waterway, traveling south in Florida wasn’t easy. You could  sail and hope you didn’t get seasick or run into a hurricane or,  by 1895, you could take one of Henry Flagler’s trains. By then, he had managed to extend service all the way to West Palm Beach.  A year later Flagler had the railroad extended to Miami. No interstate highways, though. No turnpike. Not even Military Trail, which is an interesting story for another day.

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway runs 1,095 miles from Norfolk, Virginia to Miami where it meets the Miami River.  It may have been completed in the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until 1944 that Congress agreed to provide the funding to dredge the Jacksonville-to-Miami segment the same twelve foot depth as the more northern segment and to deepen the already existing waterway from Miami to Key West.

Why did it become important in 1944? Seems it became rather urgent when the Germans decided to run their “Operation Drumbeat” along the entire US eastern seaboard. Ships were being blown up from New York to Key West. With the dredging, smaller boats were able to move to the Intracoastal Waterway where they were safe despite the German U-boats hunting off the coast.

So, the next time you head to one of those wonderful waterfront restaurants we have all over South Florida and sit under an umbrella gazing out over the very straight Intracoastal Waterway, you now know a few bits of history to astound and amaze your dinner companions.

What a Difference 26 Years Makes

    

I spend a lot of time in the past. Or, at least thinking about the past--I’ve not yet perfected time travel. I keep getting stuck in that whole time-space continuum thing.

My memories of growing up in Palm Beach County are often in my thoughts. Since I've started writing about my memories and the history of this area, I'm finding two things are happening. One is that my friends have started sharing their memories with me, which I absolutely love.

The second is that my friends are sending me some links and pictures. The YouTube link above is one of the neatest things I've seen. Uploaded to YouTube by MeMeVid, it can help those of you who didn't grow up here understand my fascination with the state and its history.

The first time I watched this video, I was spellbound. I knew Jupiter twenty-six years ago. Having grown up about ten minutes south of Jupiter in North Palm Beach, I knew it before then. A simple trip through Jupiter to Girl Scout Camp Welaka near the county line in Tequesta was a trip through wilderness.

By 1986, I was living in Broward County, but still came home to North Palm Beach from time to time. The part of  Palm Beach County I temporarily left seemed quite modern and built up to me. Looking at this video, I can see I was mistaken. The two lane roads! All those trees! It was still a wilderness in 1986.

I hope you enjoy this look at the rural area that was Jupiter Farms Road, alongside the developed area that now exists. If nothing else, this video should serve to remind all of us that we only have one chance to protect the close to pristine beauty of the place we call home - no matter where it may be.

Copyright 2012 Ruth Hartman Berge

Suni Sands and Dubois Park

            In the 1970s, when a Girl Scout was old enough to camp at the Outpost campsite in Camp Welaka in Tequesta, there was one event that was special and looked forward to by every camper—the canoe trip down the Loxahatchee River and across the Jupiter Inlet. We would pile in canoes and energetically head down the river. When the Scouts hit the inlet, the current rushing out to sea became much harder. We would push as hard as we could to avoid getting pulled out into the ocean. Alongside our canoes, dolphins cavorted beside us as we crossed, as if they knew we were nervous about the open ocean to our left.

            Across the inlet, we made landfall at Suni Sands, the mobile home park that sits nestled between State Road A1A and the water. There, we would enjoy a wonderful picnic lunch and relax before beginning the hard row back to camp.

            I recently attended a fascinating presentation by Christian Davenport, Palm Beach County Historical Preservation Officer and Archaeologist, and learned that the Suni Sands mobile home park is actually located on top of a prehistoric Indian village site—a rare “double platform mound” where the biggest of chiefs once lived.
            The Suni Sands property was at one time owned by William and Emily Sperry of S&H Greenstamps fame (for those of you who remember when Publix passed out little green stamps with every purchase). In the late 1800s, before Sperry bought the property, the main entrance of Suni Sands was the roadbed of the northern terminus of the Jupiter and Lake Worth Railroad, better known as the Celestial Railroad.
            Close by to the east is Dubois Park which was once called “Stone’s Point.” For two years, the Point had been occupied by a Major Stone and his crew who were trapped in the Intracoastal when their ship was forced to take shelter there by a storm. The Inlet closed when the storm re-arranged the sand, trapping the ship and requiring them to wait it out.  Harry Dubois arrived in 1892 and purchased the Point.

            The Dubois house was built in 1898 on top of a huge shell midden.  About two-thirds of the original midden was sold to create road beds in Harry Kelsey’s dream, Kelsey City (now Lake Park).  The big mound the house currently sits on is but a small portion of the approximately 600 foot mound, yet you can still see a gentle swell to the landscape where the mound was located.

            My friend, Kelly Farrell, who grew up in Lake Park, asked me if I remembered when the Dubois still lived on the property. One of the Dubois would come out when cars would pull up, and as Kelly and her brother Kip hung out of the windows, the Farrells would be charged a dollar for the carload to park and enjoy the beach.

            You can drive by Suni Sands, but it is private property. Dubois Park is now part of the Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation Department.  The Dubois Pioneer Home, first restored by The Loxahatchee Historical Society in the early 1970s, was severely damaged in 2004 when Palm Beach County suffered four hurricanes and it has not yet re-opened to the public. Repair and restoration is ongoing thanks to the generosity of The Loxahatchee Guild.  The Parks and Recreation Department has a “Gift to Parks Program” and would be delighted to speak with you as to where you might volunteer your time, talents or dollars to help in the continued restoration of the park and buildings. Contact Tim Gramowitz at (561) 966-6651.  

            Dubois Park itself is open to the public…and you don’t even have to have a spare dollar.

This article was published as the August column of "The Florida You Don't Know".

You can find it online in the Jupiter West  paper at http://seabreezepublications.com/Portals/0/eMag/Current/Jupiter%20West/flash.html#/9/