Camp Evergreen celebrates 90 years

TOWN OF MANLIUS – Camp Evergreen closed out its season on a high note last week with its 90th anniversary Camp Carnival celebration.
Requiring no registration and free to attend for all, the milestone-marking event the evening of Aug. 16 included fun and games for the whole family across the 58 acres of campgrounds so that parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents could see their campers’ favorite programs in action.
Located at 4795 Sweet Road in Manlius and now maintaining the distinction of being the nation’s oldest continuously operating day camp, the site overseen by the YMCA of Central New York has taken in multiple generations since 1933 with such programs as horseback riding, swimming, boating and fishing. This year, the regular season began on June 26 and concluded this past Friday, Aug. 18, two days after the Camp Carnival.
“For 90 years, it’s been the place to be during the summertime break from school where kids can meet up with old friends and new friends,” said Jesse Kanaple, the associate executive director of youth development for the Hal Welsh East Area Family YMCA in Fayetteville. “The camp has really been a staple of the Fayetteville-Manlius community for its whole entire existence.”
The celebration last Wednesday saw kids belaying on the camp’s 28-foot rock wall, practicing their archery on three separate targets, and having a crack at the rope swing in the woods when they weren’t playing cornhole, steering a kayak or canoe on Lake Evergreen, or hitting the spot with a caramel apple, a s’more or some popcorn.
Visitors also had the opportunity to join guided hikes, watch their young ones hop up on a horse for a short ride, and stop into the haunted house for a fright or the arts and crafts shack to jot down their favorite memories on poster board if they went to camp themselves.
The crafts shack, one of the oldest still-standing buildings at the camp, features toothpick paintings, tie-dyed clothing and colorful signatures on the wall dating back as early as the 1950s.
At the close of last week’s event, which took place from 6 to 8:30 p.m., there was an end-of-the-season awards ceremony by the lakeside fire pit that honored individual campers from each of Evergreen’s five units who have best exemplified the core values of caring, responsibility, honesty, respect, spirit and sportsmanship.
A staff member who “went above and beyond to create the magic of camp” was later given the annual award named for Lucian Pagano, a Camp Iroquois staffer whose life ended early due to illness in 1996. The award is bestowed upon someone who embodies community service, dedication and passion.
“The biggest thing is the people who really make camp great,” Kanaple said. “Without our amazing counselors, we couldn’t do what we do every day…A lot of our counselors were campers for anywhere from five to 10 years before being a counselor, and it’s really great that they’re able to give the experience that they had as a camper to hopefully future camp staff down the road.”
The family night was also an opportunity to fundraise for Camp Evergreen’s annual campaign by way of donations. That campaign helps to send kids to camp whose families may have trouble affording the cost to attend.
Camp Evergreen puts on four two-week sessions every summer for kids ages four to 15, and campers can participate in more than one session. This summer brought in about 1,000 campers in total, Kanaple said, including some from out of state as far as Florida, Minnesota and Michigan.