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1920-
The founding: The YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne's resident camp dates itself to 1920, and a century of Fort Wayne children have been bused the roughly forty miles north to it: Camp Potawotami, on the shores of Blackman Lake in LaGrange County, over 210 acres of woodlands, meadows and wetlands by the camp's own description. The camp directories that carry its listing give the founding year plainly, and the camp's own copy has run for years on the same arithmetic: building strong since 1920. A founder thread survives at family-account grade: a camp board member's 2021 campaign page records that his great-grandfather, Louis Schwan, helped start the camp a hundred years before. It is printed here as the family tells it, the kind of founding detail a centenary keeps in memory longer than in minutes.
What camp was: The Y camp was the one piece of Fort Wayne family entertainment that took the child away from the family, and it was understood as formation rather than diversion: friendship and fun, in the camp's own listing language, alongside challenges and character-building in a safe environment. Swimming, campfires, mud hikes, climbing, archery and arts and crafts make the camp's own program litany in its 2018 season paper. For generations of the city's children, the week at Potawotami was the summer's fixed point, as regular in the family calendar as any festival in this section, and it is the oldest continuously running entry in the leg that still does exactly what it was founded to do.
Sources:
- YMCA Camp Potawotami listings carried by Camp Channel and KidsCampingEssentials (founded 1920; Blackman Lake; over 210 acres; the camp's own descriptive language).
- YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne, Y Spirit, Spring 2018 (the camp program account).
- GiveButter, YMCA Camp Potawotami Annual Campaign, 2021 (the Schwan family founding account, printed attributed).