Campers at Hammonasset State Park

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Campers at Hammonasset State Park

by Al Miller

I would like everyone to know what I still remember about campers at the Hammonasset State Park.

Back in the early 1920s there was just one area to keep the long term campers and also an area to keep the short terms campers. The short term campers would come into the park after midnight on Friday and would have to leave at midnight on Sunday.

In the late 1920s one of the campers would get a few campers together and try to get a vaudeville show started which they did every Saturday night from 8 o'clock until 10 o'clock. The show was put on at the Main Pavilion. It went on for quite some time until the person who started it got sick and couldn't keep it going. That was the end of a wonderful show.

Now, the campers who came to the park had nothing but tents. - not like they have today, mobile homes. The long term campers would come around Memorial Day and set up their tents. Many of them would bring along lumber to make a floor, screening and canvas to make an additional room to their tent.

Long term campers had their own outhouses that the state put up for them and the state would also come and take their garbage away.

The day after a bad storm the tenters would have all their blankets, clothing, etc out on a line or some place to let them dry out. These campers were like family. They all helped to work together when a storm hit.

Back in the early 1930s I was the only one to deliver newspapers in the morning and in the evening, so I got to know quite a few campers and what they were like.

I would like to tell about when the campers had to leave in early September. Most all the campers had gone out of the park but there were just a few still left. Now, this day there comes a man and his two sons. They came in the campsite in their horse and buggy. They had the job of knocking over the outhouses so the state could clean them out and put them away for the season.

Well, this one particular camper was just about ready to leave, so the this father and two sons went up to the outhouse and pushed it over. All of a sudden they heard a woman scream, "Lordy, Lordy, help me. I can't get out." She was a maid of the tenter.

Boy, did they have trouble getting her out. But they did.