Lieutenant Governor unveils Virginia historical highway marker for ‘Group Camp 7’

State representatives at the moment devoted a historic freeway marker issued by the Virginia Division of Historic Assets that acknowledges a tenting space created for African Individuals throughout the late Nineteen Thirties.

“This weekend we celebrated Juneteenth and at the moment we unveil the most recent historic freeway marker honoring ‘Group Camp 7’ right here at Pocahontas State Park,” mentioned Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. “I’m grateful for the continued work that’s being accomplished in each nook of the Commonwealth in order that we will be taught from the previous and have fun how far we’ve come collectively.”

The Civilian Conservation Corps constructed the camp, erecting cabins and a eating corridor, and a small lake with a seaside, at what was then referred to as Swift Creek Leisure Demonstration Space, a challenge of the Nationwide Park Service.

Whereas the buildings now not stand, Group Camp 7 was constructed on land that later grew to become Pocahontas State Park, and the marker is positioned throughout the highway from the park’s essential entrance.

“Virginia State Parks proceed to work to acknowledge the historic contributions of African Individuals and welcome guests of all backgrounds to take pleasure in actions and applications at its 41 state parks,” mentioned Dr. Melissa Baker, director of Virginia State Parks.

Group Camp 7 was one of many few leisure areas within the nation open to African Individuals for group tenting. Each the Lady Scouts of Richmond and the Phyllis Wheatley Department of the YWCA provided summer season camp classes for African American women.

Camp Carey, a partnership between the Ladies’s Missionary Union of Virginia, a white group, and the Basic Baptist Conference of Virginia, a black group, operated at Group Camp 7 for greater than 1 / 4 century.

“Camp Carey meant, for me, friendship from as far north as Alexandria, from as far southwest as Pulaski and Bristol,” mentioned Ernestine Wilson. “I nonetheless have pals who had been part of Camp Carey’s expertise. And we owe all of it to teams of girls from the Baptist Basic Conference of Virginia and the Ladies’s Missionary Union – one white, one black – who mentioned to themselves, we’ve acquired to search out one thing for our women to do. And so they did.”

Virginia’s historic freeway marker program, which started in 1927 with the set up of the primary historic markers alongside U.S. Route 1, is taken into account the oldest such program within the nation. At present there are greater than 2,600 official state markers.