by Asa Gallagher, Camp Burgess Director
Burgess Waterfront, Early 1950’s
This photograph came to me in a heap of other old pictures from the first few decades of Camp Burgess. It stood out to me, first and foremost, as a fantastic action shot. These Burgess campers and staff, from the early 1950’s, are spending their afternoon jumping from a wooden high rise, canoeing, leaping from the docks and balancing precariously on a diving board that protrudes from a giant floating platform. A simple picture like this can bring up so many questions that help us better understand a wide variety of historical storylines.
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I already know the general time period of this piece. It was included in a collection of photos from the same years. The place is almost certain. It could only be on Spectacle Pond or Triangle Pond. I have read that back then campers were tested for swimming abilities on Triangle and then sent to the larger Spectacle for lessons and free time. Spectacle has always been our main swimming area, and it looks to be the same here as well. The ends of the island can be faintly seen in the back right, though Triangle Pond also has a land mass that appears the same from afar. And then there are the two house-like structures in the back left. This would be the area where the Y building now sits on the Hayward side. The town archives of Sandwich reveal that land now used for Hayward was known as the Barton Estate before the selling of the property in the late 1950’s. The buildings must be part of that estate. One still remains today, while the other has been gone for decades.
As for the swimmers, the differences are pretty obvious. There were no life jackets required, even in the deeper waters, which tells about a huge change in camping culture and safety between then and now. There is a really cool diving board on one side of the floating dock, and a double-decker diving platform on the left. We don’t have these today for various reasons, though some kind of variation on them would certainly be a big hit with our campers today. The docks are made of wood and have a different shape than today’s version, and of course the bathing suits looked much different back then.
What a picture! It has so much life to it, and the man staring back at the camera almost puts me at that beach, on that day, taking the very shot that still remains in our Burgess office.