Away to camp: Eberhart, Tamarack, and the Girl Scout camp at Syracuse

THE CAMP RECORD · 1909 TO THE 1970S · CAMPS NAMED AS CAMPS, SEATED WHERE THEY STAND

No summer camp stood in Mishawaka; Mishawaka's camp record is a record of gifts and councils, and every camp in it stands outside the city — in Michigan lake country or downstate — which is printed for each. The oldest of them exists because of a Mishawaka family, and its founding story is the best-documented, and the saddest, in this section.

Camp Eberhart, on Corey Lake near Three Rivers, Michigan, began with the South Bend YMCA. The YMCA's own pamphlet of the founding — issued by the Boys' Department of the South Bend YMCA and preserved in the St. Joseph County Public Library's Michiana Memory collection — is the first-hand account, and it is printed here as it stands. The camp opened for the season of 1909, for boys of twelve to sixteen, its term running 20 June to 1 August, with F. H. Cheley, the YMCA's boys' work director, in charge. E. G. Eberhart of Mishawaka visited the camp with his son Harris. "Shortly after this visit," the pamphlet records, Harris "met his death by a terrible automobile accident." Mr. and Mrs. Eberhart then gave $7,500 in their son's memory toward a permanent camp, and 13½ acres; the dedication was set for the Fourth of July; and later in August the camp was opened to adults and families. The camp's published history, as carried in the standard reference account, tells the same story with different figures, and the conflict is printed whole: Harris Eberhart was killed on 24 July 1909, when the car he rode in stalled on railroad tracks at Munster, Indiana, and a train struck it — his friend Richard Flagg died with him; a diary was found in which Harris had set down plans for the camp; and his father bought 17 acres. The two accounts do not reconcile — 13½ acres against 17, a gift of money and land against a purchase, and a dedication set for a Fourth of July that, on the reference account's date of death, fell either before the accident or a year after it. Both stand. What is not in conflict is the gift's Mishawaka source or its result: a permanent camp of some 200 acres with more than a mile of Corey Lake shoreline, which claims in its published history a first — the first YMCA camp in the country to offer a summer program for young women — and which became fully co-educational in the 1970s. Beside it on Corey Lake stands Camp Wakeshma, founded 1925 in Fabius Township, Michigan — the neighboring camp of the same lake country, named here as a camp of the Mishawaka children's world at pointer size. Camp Eberhart's closing line: it operates still, under the YMCA of Greater Michiana.

Camp Tamarack, the Boy Scout camp, stands at the Wood Lake Scout Reservation near Jones, in Cass County, Michigan — 10891 Withers Street — the summer camp of the La Salle Council, the Boy Scouts' council seated in South Bend whose territory has always included Mishawaka's troops. The reservation runs to more than 500 acres on Big and Little Wood Lake; Camp Tamarack proper, on the lakes' north side, is about 250 acres, with Camp Dan Beard and Camp Jim Bridger, some 80 acres each, and the Camp Will Welber training area on the south side. The camp's building is dated by the testimony of the family that lived it: Jon Vanderheyden's captioned photographs, preserved on the St. Joseph County scouting history pages, record that his family moved to the camp in the spring of 1955 while construction was still under way — the ranger's house among the first buildings up, an army-surplus 1951 Chevrolet truck hauling loads under the entrance gate — and that by 1956 the trading post and dining hall stood finished enough to photograph, the merit-badge plaques not yet on the dining-hall walls. The same captions follow the camp's first decade: the east beach from the dining-hall hill; the lifeguard shed replaced about 1961–62; a postcard view of about 1962 with the new lifeguard house; the entrance arch standing until about 1965, when a "Camp Tamarack" sign replaced its crossbeam; and, in the 1965 cooks' photograph, the note that the girl scouts also rented the camp — the council's ground serving both scouting movements of the region's children. Tamarack's closing line: it remains the council's summer camp, its campsites, dining hall, waterfront, ranges, and parade field in current use. The council's earlier camping ground, before Wood Lake was built, is not established in the record reached; the settling source is the council's own published history.

The Girl Scout camp is carried at anchor size. Mishawaka's Girl Scouts belong today to the Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana-Michiana, the council formed by the merger of the Indiana Lakeland, Limberlost, Singing Sands, and Tribal Trails councils; the merged council's resident camp is Camp Ella J. Logan, on Lake Dewart at Syracuse, in Kosciusko County, Indiana — 220 acres, founded in 1928, serving about sixty girls a week in its current seasons. The camp's 1928 founding makes it the contemporary, almost exactly, of the second generation of Mishawaka childhoods in this record; the pre-merger camp course of the South Bend-area council's own troops is not established in the record reached, and is named as a gap whose settling source is the council's historian and archives.

Sources:

1. South Bend YMCA, Boys' Department — the Camp Eberhart founding pamphlet (St. Joseph County Public Library, Michiana Memory): the 1909 season, boys 12–16, 20 June–1 August; F. H. Cheley in charge; the Eberharts' visit; Harris Eberhart's death; the $7,500 gift and 13½ acres; the Fourth of July dedication; the August opening to families.
2. The standard reference account of Camp Eberhart — Harris Eberhart killed 24 July 1909 at Munster, Indiana, Richard Flagg with him; the diary of camp plans; 17 acres bought; the camp's 200 acres and mile of shoreline; first YMCA camp to offer a summer program for young women; fully co-educational in the 1970s; operated by the YMCA of Greater Michiana. Printed whole against the pamphlet where the two differ.
3. Fabius Township history — Camp Wakeshma, adjoining Camp Eberhart, founded 1925.
4. Jon Vanderheyden, captioned camp photographs (St. Joseph County scouting history pages, rootsweb) — the 1955 move and construction, the 1956 buildings, the beach and lifeguard houses, the entrance arch to c.1965, the girl scouts' rental of the camp.
5. La Salle Council records — Camp Tamarack at Wood Lake Scout Reservation, 10891 Withers Street, Jones, Michigan; about 250 acres on the north side of Big and Little Wood Lake; Camp Dan Beard, Camp Jim Bridger, and Camp Will Welber on the south side; the reservation at more than 500 acres (2021 Webelos Resident Camp leader guide).
6. Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana-Michiana — the council's merger of the Indiana Lakeland, Limberlost, Singing Sands, and Tribal Trails councils; Camp Ella J. Logan, Lake Dewart, Syracuse, founded 1928, 220 acres, about sixty girls per week (council postings, 2026).