If Fodderstack Could Speak: Walker Valley Lore
Written by Jeremy Lloyd, Manager of Field Programs and Collegiate Studies and author of A Home in Walker Valley: The Story of Tremont
This occasional series is named for the mountain overlooking the Walker Valley campus of Tremont Institute in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If Fodderstack Mountain could speak, these are a few things it might reveal.
The history of the Girl Scouts in Walker Valley is of special importance because the camping tradition begun by Camp Margaret Townsend in many ways is still being carried on by Tremont Institute to this day.
Camp Margaret Townsend operated from 1925 to 1959, when four two-week sessions were held each summer. Girls were grouped according to age into Hunters, Settlers, Indians, Pioneers, and Gypsies. The Hunters slept on straw mats on the floor of the dining hall until what would come to be regarded as the best unit house was built for them.
No electricity or Coleman lanterns were available, only firelight. “It was very beautiful to look up at night and see the shadows,” said Alice Heap, a counselor from 1951 to 1959.
There was no telephone either. The only emergency contact was the park ranger who lived in the ranger station down the road and who might, or might not, be available. A station wagon or truck was used for some years to drive down what was then a dusty dirt road, but this didn’t happen often, nor did parents contact the ranger to deliver messages to their girls. How times have changed.
They’ve changed in other ways as well: girls bathed in the river in the early years. Only later were shower houses installed.
The dining room was lit by windows with screens, which in bad weather had to be rolled up. Meals in such cases would be eaten by candlelight using cedar candlesticks. Meals were served in a dining hall situated in the spot currently occupied by the Tremont faculty apartments. “Nosebags” were sack suppers that girls could carry to their favorite spots, usually along the river, to eat. Progressive suppers, where each camp unit prepared a different course of the meal, gave the kitchen staff a break.
Camp Margaret Townsend was the only Girl Scout camp operating inside a national park during that time. Having been in operation for many years by the time the park was founded in 1934, it was given a twenty-year lease beginning in 1940. When the camp closed in 1959, girls were allowed to take tent platforms and anything else that could be carried out with them.
The mess hall was the only building left to stand, and it was put up for sale. When no one bid on it, the park superintendent ordered it to be burned. By then it had become a haven for poachers and subject to vandalism.
A larger tract of land on Norris Lake was purchased by the Tanasi Girl Scout Council and the camp moved there in 1960. Camp Tanasi is still in operation today.
