A Half Century Later
Much has changed at camp over the years.
The use of certain buildings and camp areas has changed a bit over time. For old timers, you may recall our younger campers, (the juniors and inters) living on one side of the camp and older campers (the teens) living on the other side of camp. This changed in the late 80’s and believe it or not, we now have a boys and girls side of camp with our girls living in Cottage and Lakeside and our boys living in Hillside and Hilltop. The buildings once called Hillsides 9-12 have been reconstructed into our new Camp Infirmary. For more recent alumni, “The Rec Hall” next to the Dining Room, a one time haven for many a dance party and refreshment in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, is now a second Dining Room Area used by our boys.
A center of the social scene at Eagle Hill and every camp’s most popular spot, “The Canteen” has moved around about a half dozen times since our opening in 1963 and now resides in a beautiful new recreation hall called “The Lodge”. In addition to campers enjoying today’s most popular refreshments at the Lodge, campers nowadays make use of a large number of ping pong tables, air hockey games and pool tables while socializing in what has to be one of the nicest indoor spaces a camp could want to have at its facility.
The Eagle Hill Theatre is in its third and now permanent location at the end of our gymnasium, “Big Red”, a tremendous space built in 1978. The dancing that shook the walls and roof of “The Barn” in the early days has moved to a new location, but the barn still houses our long-standing and wonderful creative arts program. For those alumni not with us since the mid 70’s, you may be surprised to know that the swampy area beneath our basketball court (our only one back then), became a beautiful pond. The famous Eagle Hill Handball Wall succumbed to the weather a number of years ago. A group of three basketball courts sits where the wall used to be and we now have a total of five great outdoor basketball courts. The old tennis courts that sat next to the wall for years have been converted into these basketball courts and new tennis courts have been built over the years. We now have eight tennis courts.
For those campers and staff with us before the mid 80’s, a large number of facility changes took place throughout the late 80’s and 90’s. Land was opened up beyond our gymnasium, “Big Red” for the development of a large hockey rink and Climbing Tower. Our first hockey rink built in the early 80’s was covered over by a large building called “Little Red” which for many years existed as a Games Building. We built a beautiful Dance Studio in Little Red just a few years ago and have since added a Cooking Studio and a Technical Theatre Studio where we build all of our scenery and props for our three theatrical productions each summer.
More land was developed beyond the pond at the opening of camp and two beautiful, large soccer fields were created. Still more land was developed behind the Cottage bunks where we now have the additional tennis courts as well as a Gymnastics Pavilion. Many of you will recall our pool sitting across from the “Main House” in camp. A second pool right by the camp’s “Motel” was added in the early 90’s. In the mid 90’s, the creation of a huge and absolutely wonderful forementioned recreation hall, “The Lodge” took place. The views of the landscape from the deck of this magnificent building are simply fantastic and this large addition to the camp facility changed the look and feel of the Eagle Hill property in a very significant way. As a side note, both the Motel and the Main Hose received major reconstruction in the early to mid 90s leaving both buildings looking just great!
Over the years, more modern times have brought into play the creation of different facilities, a banked go-karts track, a zip line off of our climbing tower, a video production studio, a staff lounge with a computer lab area for campers, and the addition of a new camp office in the back of our one time Rec Hall.
While we’ve added many large indoor spaces and lots of facilities over the years, the most distinguishing change at camp took place during the early 80’s when we totally opened up the grounds of camp, removing all of the old trees that stood in the middle of camp, leaving a beautiful view of camp from one end of Eagle Hill to the other.
Eagle Hill has always been a beautiful two hundred acre facility – come and visit with us to see all of our changes and additions when you get a chance.
