266 FOREST OUTINGS 



and ailing is one that must also be faced, in time. When poor people face 

 physical crises, the universe is a cruel machine. They may survive with the 

 aid of clinics, hospitals, and operating tables, but when the worst is over 

 they must go back to their homes and to inadequate care at a critical time in 

 their illness. For people such as these there should in time be developed 

 camps and retreats where, in the quiet and healing of the forests, health 

 could be restored. Leased to charitable organizations, welfare associations, 

 or to public health clinics, such forest retreats would lessen for the poor some 

 of the horrors of physical disability. 



At Deer Lake in the Ocala National Forest in Florida last year an 

 experiment began. On the shores of this lake with its facilities for bathing, 

 boating, and fishing is now a camp having a maximum capacity of 140 

 persons. It was designed by the Forest Service and built as a W. P. A. 

 project. It has a mess hall, recreation hall, lavatory buildings, 14 squad huts, 

 and a director's cabin. The buildings are simple and substantial. A 200-foot 

 well furnishes excellent water. The sanitation equipment is of the best 

 engineering design. 



Open for rental by any civic or nonprofit organization, it has character- 

 istics which the Forest Service believes should be typical of the organization 

 camps for low-income groups. Controlled by the Forest Service, a public 

 agency, and with bookings for the full season allocated among various 

 organizations, it makes efficient use of the recreational possibilities of an 

 area rather than limiting the use of the area by giving a special-use permit 

 to an organization which will use its camp for only a short time each year. 

 Under Federal control it will be possible to erect more substantial buildings 

 and influence more effectively the architecture and planning of the lay-out, 

 thus avoiding the unsightly camps that are likely to result from the efforts 

 of organizations operating with meager funds. Most important, it seems that 

 the Government can so construct such camps and turn them over to use by 

 groups of the people who will use them at much lower vacation rates than 

 now prevail. 



