Construction camp

“ In a scanty widening of the main canyon a few hundred yards below the station a graders' camp of rude slab shelters is turning out its horde of wild-looking Italians; and on a crooked spur track fronting the shanties blue wood-smoke is curling lazily upward from the kitchen car of a construction train. ”

“ It might have been a drifting fragment of sunny sky. I had never seen anything alive so beautiful. A fall over a log brought me to sobriety, and when I looked up it was gone. Afterwards I saw many of them; sometimes when walking the forest there would be morphos always in sight.
The construction camp was not more than a month old. Perched on an escarpment by the line was a row of tents, and at the back of the tents some flimsy huts built of forest stuff. They stood about a ruin of felled trees, with a midden and its butterflies in the midst. Probably thirty white men were stationed there. ”

“ According to the report of the Farm Security Administration, as of January 1, 1940, one standard camp, in Yakima County, and a mobile camp, with headquarters in Walla Walla, have been established; 142 tent platforms, 200 shelters, and 48 labor homes are under construction. When camp construction is completed, facilities for 342 families will be available. While these camps offer only the minimum of decent living facilities, they provide far better shelter and sanitary arrangements than the migrant workers have previously endured. ”

“ When one is about to apply for a job as a laboring man it is well to look the part.
As the train swept along on its way down the grades the valley became more open and the prospect broadened. At one of the promontory roundings the box-car passenger had a glimpse of a shack-built construction camp on the river's margin some distance on ahead. A concrete dam was rising in sections out of the river, and dominating the dam and the shacks two steel towers, with a carrying cable stretched between them, formed the piers of the aerial spout conveyer for the placing of the material in the forms. ”

“ There were well laid-out rows of sheds, beautiful lines of construction equipment and everything in order, as it could never be in a real camp. As he began walking with the girl toward a huge tent that should have belonged to a circus, he could see other discrepancies. The tractors were designed for work in mud flats and the haulers had the narrow wheels used on rocky ground. Nothing seemed quite as it should be. He spotted a big generator working busily—and then saw a gang of about fifty men, or mandrakes, turning a big capstan that kept it going. ”

“ Then began the construction of barracks for the men, officers’ and nurses’ quarters, hospitals, repair shops, and all the other buildings necessary for the varied activities of the camp, amounting to more than 1,400 separate structures in each cantonment. Sewage systems and steam heating and electric lighting plants were installed. An ample water supply, with plenty of shower baths, was provided, allowing fifty gallons per day per capita, which is eighty per cent more than the average allowance in European army camps. Every care was used to assure the purity of the water. ”

“ But although the Division had no large quantity of building supplies to sell, it was charged, after the armistice, with the duty of disposing of the facilities at the 182 construction projects which were terminated. Many of these projects were large ones, those in this category being for the most part training camps for troops. There was a camp shortage in 1918, and the Construction Division was doing everything in its power to overcome it. We were sending men overseas at the rate of 300,000 a month ”

“ The day closes early in these great camps. At half-past eight the recreation huts close their doors. Concerts and entertainments are over. The men stream back to their tents along muddy roads, laughing, chatting, singing. Lights appear in the tents, and a glow, red or white, shines through the canvas. One after another these are extinguished. The “Last Post” sounds from a dozen bugles. The multitudinous noises of camp life die away. The rifle-fire which has crackled all day on the ranges has long ceased. The spluttering of machine guns in the training camps vexes the ear no more. ”

“ Schools for the children of employees, a hospital, postal savings bank, churches, and Y. M. C. A., a large general store and commissary, blacksmith and machine shops, sand-grinding and cement-mixing plants, all under the engineer’s direction, gave to the camp the aspect of an enterprising and busy community. ”

“ THE wood camp, viewed from a distance, was as the partners had left it, high-piled on the White River's bank amid the regal stand of spruce. When they drew nearer, they saw that the cabin itself was cold and silent. The inside appeared even more deserted than the outside. The table as well as the floor was heaped with dust and dirt. The bunk on the wall wherein they had deposited Ryan was filled with rotten spruce boughs and powdery snow, while the rusted, dilapidated stove, stripped of lid, pipe and door, looked as if it had never fried a moose steak within a year. ”

“ The position—an immense clearing in the centre of a pine-forest—is healthy. Nothing will be wanting: there is abundance of water, electric light will be installed, large windows will give light and air to the huts, the roofs will be thick and the walls made of bricks lined with wood.
Later, when the camp is on the point of being finished, the General who commands the district will let neutral notabilities and journalists visit it, and will present it to them as the future residence of those poor French prisoners over which Germany watches with a mother’s love. ”

“ But it will not be long before it will be impossible to get a taste of real camping without taking long and expensive journeys, for every available rod of lake shore and river bank is being taken up and made populous with so-called camps, and the comfortable freedom and seclusion of a real camp are made impossible there. One desiring that might better pitch his tent in the back woodlot of a farm than in any such popular resort. ”

“ It is not worth while to say much about those hunters' camps which are built in the woods of stout poles, and covered with brush or the bark of trees: they are exceedingly simple in theory, and difficult in practice unless you are accustomed to using the axe. If you go into the woods without an axeman, you had better rely upon your tents, and not try to build a camp; for when done, unless there is much labor put in it, it is not so [Pg 70] good as a shelter-tent. You can, however, cut a few poles for rafters, and throw the shelter-tent instead of the bark or brush over the poles. ”

“ A patch of land that one day was covered with cedars would next day be bare of all but stumps, the brushwood blazing merrily in huge fires. Next day the stumps in turn would be gone and by evening the new area would be covered with tents.
Already some hundreds of tents had been erected on each side of what was to be the main street of the camp. A ditching machine pantingly laboured on one side of the road and dug as much in a day as fifty men. In the ditch already made on the other side pipes had been laid and running water was available. ”

“ To-day it is still the most practicable, durable, and simply constructed house invented for a forest home, and any boy can build a log-house large enough to form a comfortable camp for vacation days. For muscles unaccustomed to such exercise it is hard work to cut down large trees, and, unless the young woodsman has served an apprenticeship on a farm or in a lumber-camp, it is dangerous work to fell big timber ”

“ So far, twenty-two miles of road have been constructed through the forest, at a small expense to the county, by the prisoners. A stone crusher and a compression drill are parts of the equipment of the road building gang, which is under the charge of the master of the camp.
Flanked on three sides by mountain slopes and by a large meadow on the other, the camp is situated in an ideal spot. Thankful are the prisoners for the change from indoor confinement, and in token of appreciation they work as hard if not harder than men on the outside who enjoy their full liberty. ”

“ For blocks the buildings lined off on either side, low, flimsy and hastily constructed—mining-camp architecture, that gave way at abrupt intervals to tall and sightly brick-and-stone structures, built for the future metropolis rather than for the present camp. A section of an electric railway that was thirty-two miles long ran through the street, and the handsomely equipped cars on it clipped past mud-encrusted mule teams from distant hill farms, prairie schooners, and dilapidated carryalls. ”

“ The methods of housing the boys differ widely. Ordinarily one thinks of tents as being the most feasible, but the scarcity and high cost of such equipment during the past year prevented the boys 293 from living under canvas. Generally speaking, it would be better to think in terms of something more permanent than tents, as these do not last more than three years, and if the camp idea of harvesting crops by the use of boys is to continue,—and many believe it will,—it is advisable to plan for a permanent and inexpensive type of building. ”

“ Imagine dirty sand, covering a layer of peat with water two feet underneath it, enclosed with a barbed wire fence. In this [66] area put four long low wooden huts with tarred felt roofs, three much smaller ones, three pumps, a long latrine, a hospital hut and some cells, and you have the sum total of the buildings in the camp.
The three long low huts held 390 officers, each hut divided roughly into eight to ten rooms. ”

“ The soldiers built little log huts and shacks, roofed them with their shelter tents, and built earth and stone fireplaces, the chimneys terminating in a flour or pork barrel which often caught fire. For an office and a place to sleep I had a wall tent with a camp stove in it. We fixed up a kitchen and, with the aid of tarpaulins, erected a few store-houses for the protection of the commissary stores, which were guarded by a sentinel. The railroad from Aquia Creek on the Potomac was quickly repaired and we drew our supplies at a railroad switch about two miles from the camp. ”

“ One has but to let his imagination run riot for a few moments to see this now deserted camp a scene of the greatest activity. The many shafts and tunnels, dump-piles and prospect-holes show how busy a spot it must have been. The hills about teemed with men. At night the log store—still standing—and the saloons—tents, shacks and log houses—were crowded with those who sought in the flowing bowl some surcease from the burden of their arduous labors. ”

“ A gang of miners worked like beavers in the bed of the stream. With fires they thawed the ground, after having diverted the creek waters the previous summer.
Their camp was a large one. Fifty men worked in two shifts, one half in the daytime, the others at night. At the beginning of each month they were changed, and night men were placed on the day force; this alternation being found best in all mining camps. ”

“ But that was not really a wilderness camp, and while I realize that in many of the trapping districts where it is necessary to camp, there are often these deserted buildings to be found, those who trap or hunt in such places are not the ones who must solve the real problems of camp building. It is something altogether different when we get far into the deep, silent forest, where the sound of the axe has never yet been heard, and sawed lumber is as foreign as a linen napkin in a trapper's shack. ”

“ Along these automobile trails camps are in strong demand. Many trail tourists do not mind patronizing the hotels a part of the time, but for the rest they greatly prefer the tent and the camp fire. To meet their needs the Forest Service has laid out and equipped a large number of camps. These are always located where good water is available, and usually a practicable wood supply is an item of the equipment. Simple provisions are made for sanitation, and cement fireplaces are often installed. ”

“ A part of the plan of operations provided for sending out pioneers to select the route and camping sites, to make bridges where they were necessary, and to open roads. The party carried light boats, but a good many bridges seem to have been required because of the spring freshets. It was while resting after a march through prolonged rain and mud, late in April, that it was decided to establish the permanent camp called Garden Grove. Hundreds of men were at once set to work, making log houses and fences, digging wells, and ploughing, and soon hundreds of acres were enclosed and planted. ”

“ To right and left are tents, their yellow canvas flapping in the wind; farther on stand out the more definite outlines of huts, now being built. At regular intervals there are drinking fountains with wooden shelters, at the present time used by prisoners to do their washing. Here is the Forum of the inhabitants of the camp; here is what they call their “Flea Market.”
The coal fires that are crackling in the neighbourhood of the pole, deserted a few seconds ago, are now crowded, as if by enchantment, by a dense and noisy throng. Men arrive, running at full speed. ”

“ The diggers’ dwellings, tents and slab-huts, and mere mia-mias of bark and branches, were dotted up the hill-sides wherever they could get a foothold, and of course as close to their claims as possible. There was no method, no order; each man built how he pleased and where he pleased; even the main road wound in and out between the shafts, and its claims to be considered permanent were only just beginning to be recognized.
The Government camp was on a little flattened eminence, overlooking the embryo township. ”