An exploration of the hidden history of camping in American life
that connects a familiar recreational pastime to camps for
functional needs and political purposes. Camping appears to be a
simple proposition, a time-honored way of getting away from it all.
Pack up the car and hit the road in search of a shady spot in the
great outdoors. For a modest fee, reserve the basic
infrastructure-a picnic table, a parking spot, and a place to build
a fire. Pitch the tent and unroll the sleeping bags. Sit under the
stars with friends or family and roast some marshmallows. This book
reveals that, for all its appeal, the simplicity of camping is
deceptive, its history and meanings far from obvious. Why do some
Americans find pleasure in sleeping outside, particularly when so
many others, past and present, have had to do so for reasons other
than recreation? Never only a vacation choice, camping has been
something people do out of dire necessity and as a tactic of
political protest. Yet the dominant interpretation of camping as a
modern recreational ideal has obscured the connections to these
other roles. A closer look at the history of camping since the
Civil War reveals a deeper significance of this American tradition
and its links to core beliefs about nature and national belonging.
Camping Grounds rediscovers unexpected and interwoven histories of
sleeping outside. It uses extensive research to trace surprising
links between veterans, tramps, John Muir, African American
freedpeople, Indian communities, and early leisure campers in the
nineteenth century; tin-can tourists, federal campground designers,
Depression-era transients, family campers, backpacking enthusiasts,
and political activists in the twentieth century; and the crisis of
the unsheltered and the tent-based Occupy Movement in the
twenty-first. These entwined stories show how Americans camp to
claim a place in the American republic and why the outdoors is
critical to how we relate to nature, the nation, and each other.
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