Camp Arcadia

Led by Executive Secretary Walter A. Maier, the Walther League, the youth arm of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, founded its first Walther League Camp in Arcadia in 1922. Inspired by his visit to Epworth Heights in 1921, Maier sought to develop a similar resort for young Lutherans. Charles Starke, an Arcadian lumber baron, shared Maier's goal and offered significant aid to spur the camp's development. The Starke family donated thirty acres of land in Arcadia, helped fund the purchase of an additional eighty acres, and sold the league discounted building materials. With their aid, Camp Arcadia opened in July 1923 with the attendees staying in two hotels. Architect William Bowman designed the camp layout and the 1923 Assembly building, which was built by Leo Tondu, an Arcadian who also constructed the camp's other large building in 1926 and 1947. The opening of Camp Arcadia in 1923 signaled the local community's gradual economic shift away from the lumber industry to seasonal homes and tourism. The Walther League leased camp lots to families and encouraged them to build summer cottages. The Cottage Colony numbered twenty-two homes by 1945. Thousands of visitors from across the United States and abroad came to the camp each season during the 1940s and 1950s. The Walther League's decline in the 1960s made the continued operation of the camp uncertain. In 1967 the "Concerned Arcadians," a group primarily composed of members of the camp community, resolved to lease the camp from the league. After the 1968 season drew more than one thousand visitors from fourteen states, the group formed the Lutheran Camp Association and raised funds to buy the camp, finalizing the purchase in 1969.