Long before stores specializing in outdoor supplies existed, camping required extensive preparation. Without prepackaged dinners or pop-up tents, campers were exposed to the elements and arguably more in tune with their natural surroundings. Despite this, camping was still a popular activity in the late 19th century.
Before the Ford family left Mendocino for Oakland in 1872, the family went on a camping trip on the North Fork of Big River with the Denslow, Chalfant, and Hill families. Cook Mary Beaver also came; she was likely the cook for one of the families.
In her memoir, Catherine “Katie” Ford remembered being 10 or 11 on the trip. She wrote “The older folks went in wagons, and the youngsters on horseback or in the provision truck with bedding. An old cabin formerly used by [a] logging camp was our common sleeping house.” The children swam, fished and picked berries. The girls used poison oak leaves to decorate the edges of their night dresses with “unexpected consequences!” The men fished and hunted for food.
When the Ford children became adults, they regularly traveled to Mendocino. With their own children, Katie, Chester, and Ella Ford frequently camped at Alder Camp, located below Big Hill, near the confluence of Little North Fork and Big River. They regularly encountered wildlife. Chester and Ella claimed to kill a “panther” (likely a mountain lion) outside of camp; Chester wore its claw as a necklace for many years after. Ella’s daughter Alice Earl Wilder remembered the children’s tent being moved because her father spotted a lion nearby. A canvas called a mosquito bar was attached around beds and would be pulled down at night to protect the tents’ inhabitants.
Despite the rustic conditions, women still dressed in their typical day dresses, using a circle of redwoods surrounded by ferns as a dressing room. For entertainment, they fished and swam, but they also brought some of the amenities of in-town life. In 1887, Katie recalled, “We had our instruments and string quartette every day,” playing music for each other and visitors from town.
With material from an abandoned logging camp, the men built a music room with a roof and one wall open towards the fire. Katie’s husband John Rea built a darkroom for developing photographs, using mud to fill up cracks in the wood. One summer, John developed 30 photos, the best of which were sent to town to be duplicated.
Averee McNear is curator at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino, Calif.
These things that happened did not happen to people that were poor. If they slept outside it was because they had nowhere else to sleep. Only the families with money got to send their kids to camp. I want people to understand that this was not the norm. The majority of people at that time we’re pretty poor. I think it’s wonderful that they could do these things for their children and for their families and we did for our children and family and my father worked extra time every year because it cost $25 for us to be in church camp for a week and he wanted us to go. I had no problem with going to church or church camp. But I’m telling you and the years that you’re talking about, these were not poor children and poor families these are ones that were a little well off. And again, I think it was wonderful did they got to experience that because his kids I don’t even think they knew how lucky they actually were. I was poor most of my life I never felt poor because we always had food on the dinner table and we were able to eat lunch at school and we had a roof over our head. Those are all things that my father and sister on because when he was born they lived in a boxcar for some time in the backwards of Tennessee. As we get older each child is able to do more things and live a little better but of course when it gets to a certain point sometimes children need to know what it’s like to be humble unfortunately a lot of young people nowadays don’t know that feeling and they’re a little spoiled but thank God we live here because in this town we live in there are so many young people that are such good young people and especially the children. Yes everybody has their problem children in their little town but the majority of our children here are wonderful and thoughtful and kind. I thank God every day that I get to live here in such a beautiful little town