Camp Manitou for Boys in Oakland, Maine, is a residential boys' summer instructional camp. Enrollment consists of 350 campers from 26 states and six countries who attend for either three and a half or seven weeks. There are 150 counselors and support staff. Campers can choose from 23 different land instructionals, 17 waterfront instructionals and 12 creative programs. <ref> www.campmanitou.com/thecamp </ref>

Manitou was opened in 1947 by Henry and Jean "Sis" Marcus with 52 campers and 16 counselors. They passed it on to their son, Myles, and his wife, Sue, who operated the camp from 1971 until 1979. Myles's younger brother, Bob, became the owner in 1980. He and his wife, Amy, sold the camp in 1998 to longtime campers, counselors, and directors Jon Deren and David Schiff. <ref> http://www.campmanitou.com/indepth/ </ref>

Camp Manitou is accredited by the American Camping Association. <ref> www.campmanitou.com/thecamp </ref>

History

Eastern Abenaki Indians hunted and fished on the land that is now Camp Manitou. They lived off porcupine and beaver in the fall and summer and moose and caribou in the winter, trading furs with other tribes for cornmeal and tobacco. Centuries later, just as World War I broke out in Europe, Dr. E. E. Gillette would choose the lakefront for a fishing resort he called Sandy Beach Camp. He built the lodge that overlooks the waterfront in 1914 with a stone from each of the 48 states in the nation at that time, plus every element then known — including gold — embedded in the fireplace that still bears his initials. Shellshocked in the war, Gillette was committed to an insane asylum, and he never saw the camp again.

The original dining hall was built about the same time as the Lodge and sat across the road from the present-day Bunk 1 and the office. Made entirely of wooden logs planed smooth on the inside, it would be leveled by a giant fire in 1969.

The land owned by the fishing camp extended only to the area where the modern-day laundry now sits and, from there, to about 20 feet west of the Baseball Diamond No. 1 first baseline. An old stone wall still marks the boundary between the camp and its neighbors. None of the cabins from the fishing camp remain.<ref> http://www.campmanitou.com/indepth/ </ref>

By the end of the next world war, Sis and Henry Marcus were running a hotel called the Nautilus Inn in Nantasket, Massachusetts. Guests had been complaining there was nowhere for their children to spend summers in their newfound postwar leisure time. Sis's brother, Joe Nathanson, who would later open Camp Matoaka for Girls across the lake, talked Henry into founding Manitou in 1947. Henry was to pick the site while Joe, a high school all-star athlete, would choose the site and recruit the campers.

Henry settled on the Belgrade Lakes, where several of the nation's most distinguished camps already operated. Manitou would share East Lake with Camp Somerset for Girls, which had been founded in 1898, the co-educational Camp Lakeridge, Camp Lown, and Camp Eastwood, an adult camp where relatives of Somerset girls stayed and golfed. Somerset, Eastwood, Lown, and Lakeridge have all since closed.

Henry signed the deed to camp on November 6, 1947. Jerry Nathanson, no relation to the founding family, claims to have been the first camper to sign up for Manitou. His son Neal was to follow in his footsteps 30 years later.

The first "beautiful Manitou morning" dawned July 6, 1947, the Manitou Messenger reported. The Messenger was published for the first time on July 13 with Joe at the controls of the hand-cranked mimeograph machine when he wasn't busy with his other duties as co-director. Campers and counselors arrived at camp by train from Boston because the roads to central Maine were rudimentary. There were seven camper cabins, none of which remain.<ref> http://www.campmanitou.com/indepth/ </ref>

Traditions

The schedule is signaled by military-style bugle calls, from Reveille in the morning to Taps at night. After breakfast and clean-up, campers attend instructional sessions. A rest period follows lunch, after which there is typically intracamp or intercamp competition. Manitou is a member of the Central Maine Camp League.

During College League, which stretches through the first weeks of the summer, campers are divided into four teams named after universities with counselors as "deans." At the end of the summer, there's an intense, four-day Color War that divides the camp into Maroon and Gray. All aspects of each day are judged, from competition on the athletic fields to conduct in the dining hall.

Color War "breaks" with a dramatic surprise, often after dark. After a preparation day, it opens with the digging up of the hatchet in the Indian Village. At the end of Color, the hatchet is reburied with the color of the winning team facing up.<ref> http://www.campmanitou.com/indepth/ </ref>

Facilities

Camp Manitou's 250-acre campus includes 55 cabins and other buildings nestled in the Maine woods, with more than 40 acres of athletic fields. There are four baseball and softball diamonds, two with dugouts and adjacent professional-style batting cages. One Little League-sized diamond is lighted for night play and has a broadcast booth and a replica of the Green Monster left-field wall at Fenway Park. There are seven lighted basketball, eight lighted tennis and two lighted street hockey courts, one sand and two grass volleyball courts, six soccer pitches, fields for lacrosse, football and European handball, an oval running track, archery and riflery ranges, a golf driving range and putting green complete with sand trap, even a miniature golf course. There are two indoor gymnasiums, including Alumni Hall, built in 2007, with a weight room and athletic offices, and a new office and infirmary overlooking the lake staffed by registered nurses and a doctor.

Built in 1998, the 520-seat, 8,500-square-foot dining hall includes a bake shop, two walk-in refrigerators and walk-in freezer, and a 2,000-square-foot kitchen. There are alternate and vegetarian choices and three salad bars.

The camp is in Camp Manitou Cove on East Lake, part of Central Maine's Belgrade Lakes chain. It includes an island used for SCUBA diving, waterskiing, snorkeling and camping. Manitou's waterfront has more than 75 boats, including four competitive ski boats. There are also two water basketball hoops, three enclosed swimming areas, a secluded onshore fishing rock, and a 1,000-square-foot boathouse with classrooms and equipment.

Manitou's 20-station high and low ropes course also has a four-sided, 50-foot climbing tower. From the top of the tower, much of the Manitou campus and the surrounding lakes are visible.

There is also a 520-seat theater with sound and lighting booth and two costume rooms used for plays, skits, movies, talent shows, special guests, and other events. Manitou has a full-time theater director, set designer and costumer who help campers stage six plays each summer, including an end-of-the-season musical with campers and staff.

Manitou's campus is self-contained, with laundry, maintenance and motor pool facilities, a lakefront lodge, editing and animation studios, darkrooms, computer laboratories, a daily newspaper, a movie theater, and a 50-watt broadcast radio station.<ref> http://www.campmanitou.com/indepth/ </ref>