Campers, Camps, and Camping in Michigan: 1890s-1940s

When you were a kid, did you go to camp during the summer?
Did you WANT to go to camp?
Did your parents strongly suggest you go to camp?

If you live in Michigan, camping is a must, one way or another.

Kids get their camping feet wet either by being shipped off to a summer camp, church camp, or scout camp. If it’s a good experience, they’ll usually wanna give it a shot with some neighborhood buddies out in the woods behind the local school…..or wait until they’re adults and on their own. My neighborhood buddies and I went out and camped in the woods all through our school years.

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For me, fall is the best season to go camping – less heat, less humidity, less bugs, less crowded, and more colors. The skies are a crisp blue, the colors of the leaves are almost day-glo, cool breezes..…October is the month when I love to camp.

Doesn’t matter if you have a canvas tent, pup tent, camper, RV…or just sleep out under the stars in a sleeping bag near a campfire. The smell of pine trees and bacon sizzling on a campfire are two of the things I look forward to.

Campgrounds are okay, but if you can find a secluded place out in the woods to set up camp away from everyone, perfect. However, it’s getting harder and harder to find public patches of land where you can do that…..many of us have been chased off someone’s property by an officer, or the old farmer on whose land you just happened to pitch a tent.

Nothing sways us…if we wanna go camping, we’ll go camping. The gallery below has images of many Michigan campers, campgrounds, and kids' camps, some going back as far as the late 1800s. Have a look and see if any of these seem familiar!