Our History
Getting started
In 1945, a fledgling Christian club program for girls called “Pioneer Girls” was not yet a year old in New England, and the leaders decided to venture into camping. Those adventurous women encountered numerous problems with that first one-week camp on a rented site in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. One leader recalled, “It wasn’t a very nice place. We were too close to the highway and had to cross it to get to a poor swimming area. The cabins leaked, and yet our 56 campers had a wonderful week. Among the many who made decisions that first year, two 16-year-old girls gave their lives to Christ.” The camp founders knew that God was in their ministry to girls, and they persevered.
From 1946 through 1949, the Pioneer Girls and the Christian Service Brigade (the boys’ counterpart to Pioneer Girls) held their summer camps at Lake Tispaquin in Middleboro, Massachusetts. As both programs grew, there was not enough space for all the campers who wanted to attend. Something had to be done. In the summer of 1948, leaders from both programs met together in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and agreed that summer camping was important to the Christian growth of children and they should endeavor to secure a site somewhere in New England for the purpose of having a camp program.
On October 30, 1948, the group found themselves at a site on the Blackwater River near Mt. Kearsarge in New Hampshire. They were so thrilled with this place that they held a prayer meeting asking God’s guidance on this phase of their search. After the prayer meeting, an offering was taken up and the small group that was there gave the first money toward a camp site: $6.75. Then and there it was decided that more money would have to be donated, and a corporation should be formed so they could accept donations and plan for the future. Deciding on a corporation name was one of their first decisions. The Pioneer Girls called their camping program Camp Cherith (named after the Brook Cherith in 1 Kings 17). Because the Christian Service Brigade camp was called Puk-wudj-ies, meaning “wild men of the woods,” the two programs blended their names for the site and Cherwudj was incorporated in the state of Maine in 1949.
Camp Cherith comes to Lyman, ME
That same year, the continuing search for property eventually led to the ideal site: Camp Emoh, formerly a Jewish boys’ camp, was available on Bunganut Pond in Lyman, Maine. The property had been valued at $90,000 before a devastating forest fire in 1947 destroyed the main buildings and some of the surrounding land. In January 1949, the long road into camp was lined with nothing but charred tree skeletons when the Cherwudj leaders went to see the site. Halfway in, the group’s cars became stuck in the snow. They got out of their cars and trudged toward camp on foot. Down that road, God led the group to a site better than any other they had seen. It was just as close to the lower end of Connecticut as to northern Maine. It had 15 cabins and a septic system; the only thing lacking in order to have camp the following season was a dining hall. The fire-reduced price was $20,000, but there was only $50 in the treasury! After prayerful consideration, they had enough faith to offer $10,000. Donations from individuals and churches throughout New England came in through the winter of 1949 and 1950, so that by May 1950, as soon as the mud dried enough to make the road drivable, construction began on the first dining hall. Work crews from many churches built the dining hall quickly—overcoming challenges such as high wind, lack of electricity, repairing broken water pipes, and working only on weekends—so the new site could be used for the 1950 season.
What camp looked like in the beginning
In those early years, ten cabins were used to house campers, and the others became the infirmary, craft shop, Tuck Shop with director’s quarters, a recreation cabin, and a nature activities cabin. The handy man and his wife and children lived in a tent. In 1952 a new administration building (the current maintenance storage shed) was built with an office and four bedrooms. Each morning the camp counselors trekked up the steep hill for an early-morning prayer meeting in the office.
When the camp was purchased, the acreage was very small—just 12 acres. The camp leadership was concerned that people would buy the land surrounding the camp and build cottages, disturbing the quiet isolation so crucial to a camp experience. Also, there was little space to expand and not much waterfront. One summer day in 1953, Director Ginny Anderson went with a couple of the counselors who were also serving on the camp committee to visit the woman who owned the land around the camp. They discovered that she wanted to sell, but not receive the payment all at once. Her asking price was $5,000 for 110 acres, but she only wanted $500 a year paid on it over the next several years. Ginny and the other women figured out that if they found ten people willing to donate $1 per week, they could make the payments. Ten were soon found among the counselors, and when the matter was brought to the board in the fall, they decided to buy the land. Cherith campers today can thank those visionary women who were willing to take risks and make financial sacrifices ($1 a week was a big commitment back then!) to secure a good camp site for future generations.
How NECC became "girls only"
Use of the new site grew quickly, with the girls and boys each having three weeks of camp in 1951, four weeks in 1952, and five weeks each for the next several years until 1964, when it became apparent that the girls needed more weeks in order to accommodate all the requests for registrations. The boys went in search of a more rustic location, which they found on Kezar Lake in Lovell, Maine. The boys program became known as New England Frontier Camp. The girls’ program bought out the Christian Service Brigade half of camp in 1965 for $28,500, and incorporated as New England Camp Cherith. Many thanks must go to the faithful people who gave their time and money to grow this vision of Christian camping for youth in the Northeast, and to those who are still giving in the same ways so that New England Camp Cedarbrook can fulfill its mission of “telling the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.” (Psalm 78:4)