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Who are the real campers? Through-hiking backpackers traversing the Appalachian Trail? The family in an SUV making a tour of national parks and sleeping in tents at campgrounds? People committed to the RV lifestyle who move their homes from state to state as season and whim dictate? Terence Young would say: all of the above. Camping is one of the country's most popular pastimes-tens of millions of Americans go camping every year. Whether on foot, on horseback, or in RVs, campers have been show more enjoying themselves for well more than a century, during which time camping's appeal has shifted and evolved. In Heading Out, Young takes readers into nature and explores with them the history of camping in the United States.Young shows how camping progressed from an impulse among city-dwellers to seek temporary retreat from their exhausting everyday surroundings to a form of recreation so popular that an industry grew up around it to provide an endless supply of ever-lighter and more convenient gear. Young humanizes camping's history by spotlighting key figures in its development and a sampling of the campers and the variety of their excursions. Readers will meet William H. H. Murray, who launched a craze for camping in 1869; Mary Bedell, who car camped around America for 12,000 miles in 1922; William Trent Jr., who struggled to end racial segregation in national park campgrounds before World War II; and Carolyn Patterson, who worked with the U.S. Department of State in the 1960s and 1970s to introduce foreign service personnel to the "real" America through trailer camping. These and many additional characters give readers a reason to don a headlamp, pull up a chair beside the campfire, and discover the invigorating and refreshing history of sleeping under the stars. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Terence Young looks at the phenomenon of camping in America, tracing its evolution over the years. He discusses problems the national parks had with campers and how that led to individual campsites. He also discusses how camping evolved from fairly primitve conditions to RVs. Young's work focuses mainly on camping within the national park and forest systems. The book needed to spend time discussing privately-owned campgrounds, including those with memberships, and chains, such as KOA, or affiliation of privately owned campgrounds with networks such as Good Sam. In spite of this one weakness, it was a very interesting and informative read. I've been reading quite a bit about the formation of Great Smoky Mountain National Park in show more preparation for an upcoming lecture I'm giving. I was delighted to see the author included some information regarding the way land was acquired for it and Shenanadoah National Park to give the system an Eastern United States presence, although it wasn't new information for me. This review is based on an advance reader's e-galley provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. show less
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Author Information
4 Works 46 Members
Terence Young is an assistant professor of geography at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Common Knowledge
- Important places
- USA
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Sports and Leisure, History, Travel
- DDC/MDS
- 796.540973 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Athletic and outdoor sports and games Outdoor leisure Camping
- LCC
- GV191.4 .Y68 — Geography, Anthropology and Recreation Recreation. Leisure Recreation. Leisure Outdoor life. Outdoor recreation
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 20
- Popularity
- 1,228,169
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
