In 2015, Camp Alkulana was added to the National Register of Historic Places. This listing recognizes the camp’s historic national significance in connection with the American camping movement, the settlement house movement, and the leadership of women in promoting social change in urban America.
In January, we finally received our sign to mark the achievement! You will see it posted at the beginning of our camp driveway. The sign says:
Camp Alkulana, one of Virginia’s oldest residential summer camps, was established in 1925 and moved here in 1917. Nannie Crump West, a social reformer who directed a settlement house in Richmond under the auspices of that city’s Baptist Woman’s Missionary Circle founded the camp to provide the benefits of outdoor recreation to girls from urban, working-class families. Swimming, hiking, cave exploring, crafts, and religious services afforded the campers leisure, adventure, practical skills, and spiritual growth. The camp’s Rustic-style buildings blended with the environment and encouraged closeness with nature. Boys began attending about 1950 and the camp was racially desegregated in 1968.
To read more about Camp Alkulana’s history, visit the history page on our website.
