Good Fellow Club Youth Camp: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

Regions 3, 4, & 5 Park Cultural Landscapes Program

The Good Fellow Club Youth Camp occupies a wooded site near the center of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in Indiana, about two miles south of the Lake Michigan shore. The 63-acre camp contains one- to three-story rustic buildings with redwood tongue-and-groove siding and rectilinear massing. The camp historically served recreational and educational purposes for children of employees in the local manufacturing industry. The Good Fellow Club Youth Camp period of significance is identified as 1941 to 1976, starting with construction of the camp by U.S. Steel and including the duration of time that the site functioned as a camp under company ownership. The camp was constructed to provide recreational opportunities for children of U.S. Steel Employees. It was designed to embody company engineers’ visions of an Adirondack-style summer camp, intended to suggest a rural, rustic character that would align with the natural environment. The wood buildings feature simple facades and fenestration with flat, hipped, or low-pitched gable roofs. The landscape is significant for associations with social history, industry, education, and architecture in Northern Indiana during this time. Steel manufacturing was a dominant industry in the United States from the late nineteenth century until 1970, and the development of this region was shaped by the establishment of the U.S. Steel Gary Works. The camp reveals both the ideals and realities of economic and social currents of the time; the camp looked to promote equality by bringing children of laborers and executives together, yet also reflects the racial segregation of the period. The camp also preserves historical perspectives towards recreation, rustic architecture, and relationships to the landscape. The historic buildings of the camp are located at the northwest corner of the site. Currently, much of the site is covered by trees or dense shrubbery, although an area near the lodge was cleared and seeded for grass in 2000–2001. During the camp’s operation from 1941 to 1976, a large portion of the site (about 35 acres) was maintained as open lawn areas to serve as playing fields. Contributing buildings and structures within the study boundaries include the lodge, gatehouse, caretaker’s house and garage, stone wall and pillars, pillars and an iron gate at the river, steel bridge, swimming pool, pool house, staff cabin, director’s cabin, pump house, equipment shed, tennis courts/basketball courts, riflery, camp cabin foundations, nurses’ cabin foundation, washhouse foundation, handicraft house foundation, outdoor checkerboard, and nature house foundation. Landscape elements that contribute to the landscape include circulation features, such as the main service drive into the camp; topographic features, such as the re-grading at the pool and tennis court sites; cultural vegetation, such as the pines planted on the site during the 1940s and 1950s; small-scale features, such as historic fencing and site lighting; and views and vistas across the site. Noncontributing structures on the site comprise facilities constructed since 1998 for the Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center, including the bus shelter, ten cabins, dining hall, challenge course, and parking lot. Although some of these features are in poor condition and several structures have been modified, the wealth of historic cultural resources remaining in the camp continues to convey an understanding of the landscape’s historic character. The use of steel in construction illustrates the industrial connections of the camp, and the natural setting still suggests the environmental context of the camp’s operations. There are future plans to re-use this landscape and the Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center to provide educational opportunities to children.

Good Fellow Club Youth Camp: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

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