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Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area - Cabin Camp 1 Virtual Visit

Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area is located in Prince William Forest Park near Triangle, Virginia. The group cabin camping facilities at Camp 1 were built by the National Park Service with Civilian Conservation Corps labor as part of the development of Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area (RDA) in 1935-38. The RDA program was a New Deal initiative of the National Park Service which repurposed underutilized agricultural land near urban centers into outdoor recreational areas. Chopawamsic RDA turned 11,000 acres of small farms and an abandoned pyrite mine along Quantico Creek in Prince William County and Stafford County, Virginia into a model recreation area with five cabin camps. The camps at Chopawamsic were intended to serve social service groups in Washington, DC that offered group camping experiences to underprivileged children.

Camp 1 features rustic log and heavy timber buildings representative of the National Park Service/Civilian Conservation Corps aesthetic of the 1930s. The buildings share a characteristic waney-edge siding that retains the irregular profile of the log, and is applied in vertical and horizontal sections. Log posts and log faced heavy timbers also add to the rustic appearance of the Chopawamsic structures. Camp 1, like the other four Chopawamsic camps, includes a cluster of administration buildings -- dining hall, infirmary, staff quarters, administration building, craft lodge, central washhouse, and helps' quarters -- and multiple cabin units. Each cabin unit had a cluster of camper cabins, leader cabins, a latrine, and a unit lodge. The four cabin units at Camp 1 have replacement cabins, but retain their original site plan and unit lodge buildings. Camp 1 is also noteworthy in that it was one of two Chopawamsic camps (with nearby Camp 4) designated for African-American campers at an early date.

Camp 1 was used as Camp Lichtman for many years, hosting groups of African-American boys from the Twelfth Street YMCA in Washington, DC. This use resulted in a codification of local segregation practices with separate entrances for the black camps on the north side of the site and white camps on the south. However, Camp 1 provided new camping facilities laid out according to the latest ideas in recreational planning at a time when few options were available to African-American groups. By the 1960s, Camp 1 was used as co-ed and integrated Camp Goodwill by Family and Child Services of Washington, DC. Today is it part of Prince William Forest Park near Triangle, Virginia.

Project Information

Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) completed comprehensive Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) documentation of Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area - Cabin Camp 1 in summer 2012.

The project was sponsored by the National Park Service's National Capital Region, Perry Wheelock, Chief, Cultural Resources. Project planning was coordinated by Catherine Lavoie, Chief, HABS; Robert Arzola, HABS Architect; and by Paul Petersen, Chief of Resource Management, Prince William Forest Park (PRWI). The field work was undertaken and the measured drawings were produced by HABS Architects Paul Davidson, Daniel De Sousa, and Jason W. McNatt. The historical reports were written by HABS Historian Lisa P. Davidson. The large-format photography was done by HABS Photographer James W. Rosenthal. Crucial assistance was provided by PRWI Superintendent Vidal Martinez, Cultural Resource Specialist Colette Carmouche, and other PRWI staff.

This animation of an intensity mapped point cloud of the Camp 1 Dining Hall is comprised of approximately 10 individual stations rendered in Pointools. The animation is produced as a byproduct of the scan data captured by a high-definition laser scanner used in the production of HABS drawings. Paul Davidson created the video animation.

Tags

Prince William Forest Park

Last updated: October 31, 2023