This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Prairie Club, which evolved from the Playground Association of Chicago to become the granddaddy of conservationist organizations. In 1908, the first of
its many Saturday Afternoon Walking Trips took place, headed by such stalwarts as architect Dwight Perkins and landscape architect Jens Jensen. Their mission
of conservation and promotion of outdoor exercise had a major impact on the formation of the Cook County Forest Preserves and Indiana Dunes State Park. Two Prairie Club camps still remain: the camp in Spring Grove, Ill., and Camp Hazelhurst in Harbert, Mich. Now, the Camp Hazelhurst cottages have been passed down to a new generation of Prairie Clubbers.
Charley McKelvy’s Story
A freelance writer, Charley McKelvy became hooked on Camp Hazelhurst in his early twenties. “It was party central,” he remembers, “campfires on the beach, guitars. It was great.”
After he was married, Charley and his wife, Natalie, lived in Chicago, and bought a small Prairie Club cottage where they spent weekends. Their move to full-time residency was serendipitous. “I was flying back from a business trip,” he recalls, “and this plane flew right over the Prairie Club grounds. The woods and the beach looked so beautiful from the air; and I was reading an in-flight magazine which said, ‘You can work from home,’ with computers and all the new technology; and I thought, ‘Why can’t I do that!’”
Craig Family Story
As a Prairie Club historian, Betty Craig didn’t have to look much past her own experiences – she’s been coming to the camp for more than 50 years.
“(The cottages) are passed down from one generation to another,” says Betty, whose daughters Sarah (left) and Patricia (right) now share a cottage there. “I have been coming here for 52 years, but I still feel like a newcomer.”
Both Craig daughters have remained active in Prairie Club activities. Patricia, an architect, designed the remodeling of Buena Vista, the cottage originally built by William Hibbs and now available for weekend rentals.
Not a heckuva lot has changed,” Camp Hazelhurst residents say, in the 70-plus years since the camp was established by the Prairie Club in the thickly wooded terrain of Harbert, Mich. The original-frame cottages now sport new roofs, porches and central heating, but most of them are no larger than 1,000 square feet. And residents remain devoted to the club’s conservationist ideals.
On weekends, regardless of how chilly or windy the weather, Prairie Clubbers hike along packed-earth trails sheltered by towering birch, oak and ash trees. There’s only one sidewalk a couple of
feet wide on the 60-acre property. English ivy blankets the ground, and wildflowers signal the seasons. Steps to the Lake Michigan beach and a path of planks were laid by volunteers as a community endeavor, and the big red barn is maintained for social activities.
Individuals do not own the land, explains Megan Hughes, a third-generation Prairie Clubber. “The cottages are privately owned, and we have long-term land-lease arrangements with the Prairie Club. You have to be a club member to own or even rent a place here. There are 94 cottages now, and that’s the max. Committees establish rules for their size – no wider than 26 feet, no higher than one and a half stories. We like our little cottages. We refer to bigger places as ‘beached whales.’”
“Most of the cottages date from the 1930s and early ’40s,” says Betty Craig, Hazelhurst historian and member for more than 50 years. “The Prairie Club members started camping out in Tremont, Ind., but in the 1920s they sold that land to the Indiana Dunes State Park and bought this farm property from William Hibbs. About 13 or 14 cottages were floated over from Indiana on barges, and mules hauled them up the hill. This was during the Depression, and people didn’t have the money to build new places.”
Leo Krusack, president of the 817-member Prairie Club, emphasizes that anyone can join. “Most of our members are Midwesterners,” he says, “but some come back to visit from Arizona, New Mexico, especially during the summers. We’ve become a family organization now, and we intend to reassert our activisim. Jerry Donnelly, the CEO for The Morton Arboretum, is trying to reintroduce the American chestnut to our land; he’s on our conservation committee. The camp has committees for everything – roads or plants or where to park the boats or whatever. We used to have a canoe club, but now we have windsurfers, sailboats, kayaks – no Jet Skis are allowed.”
From its inception, the Prairie Club has attracted scientists, writers, architects, college professors, and other professionals. Tim Wixted lives year-round at Hazelhurst with his wife, Anna, a native of Argentina. Wixted is a retired linguistics professor from the University of Arizona; both his parents were doctors who practiced in Chicago. Megan Hughes, a home-health nurse, is also a year-round resident. The cottages themselves have their own exciting stories, too.
Craig has just completed a chronology of ownership for each cottage, based on notes left by Hettie Gooch, an old-time Chicago schoolteacher. “Many of the cottages have remained within the same family,” she says.
“There is a different mindset today,” reflects Sarah Craig, one of Betty’s two daughters. “We used to spend the entire summer at Camp Hazelhurst. Now, with women working, we have fewer full-time campers and more weekenders. We used to rely heavily on volunteerism, and now we need to pay for more services, such as snow-plowing. But we still have the ice-cream socials, the children’s variety shows, the barn programs on Wednesday and Saturday nights. And the spirit of the outdoors – that remains unchanged.”
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