Camp Merrie-Woode: A Century of Girls in the Mountains

Alongside Fairfield Lake in the mountains of Jackson County, North Carolina, in the shadow of a peak called Old Bald, a girls' camp has been running continuously since nineteen nineteen. That makes Camp Merrie-Woode one of the oldest girls' summer camps in the South, and the Adirondack-style buildings spread across its grounds have stood long enough to earn a place on the National Register of Historic Places.

The camp was founded in the summer of nineteen nineteen by Mabel Day, who went by the nickname Dammie, and Mary Turk. They named it Camp Merrie-Woode from the start, a name Day said she chose because, in her words, it is a merry wood and campers will always make it so.

Mabel Day remained director for thirty summers. During her tenure Merrie-Woode became known throughout the South as one of the premier destinations for girls whose families wanted them to spend summers developing confidence, physical skills, and friendships away from home. The camp opened during the height of a national movement that saw hundreds of residential camps for young people established in the mountains and lakes of the rural East and Midwest, a Progressive Era belief that nature, structure, and outdoor experience were the proper formation of healthy character.

The buildings that housed those early campers, crafted in the rustic Adirondack tradition with exposed timber framing and natural materials that blend into the mountain setting, are what earned the National Register designation in nineteen ninety-five. The camp itself continues operating for girls aged seven to seventeen, the same lake, the same mountain, the same mission as when Dammie Day drove the first campers up from the valley more than a century ago.