A look back at Camp Nitgedaiget, Beacon’s once-thriving Communist resort
If you drive south from Beacon a couple miles, park at the Notch trailhead and walk 100 feet or so toward “the Naturals” swimming hole, you’ll find the crumbling foundation of a swimming pool. This concrete ledge is all that remains of a once-thriving resort that catered to the Jewish garment workers who immigrated to New York City around the turn of the last century.
photo credit: Diane Lapis
Founded in 1922, Camp Nitgedaiget (pronounced Nish-guh-die-get), was the first of many year-round vacation spots that were founded outside New York City to improve living conditions for people working in the “needle trades” — many of them Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. But it wasn’t just a vacation spot; it was also a wellspring of Communist ideas.
“The idea was to develop strong, healthy workers who would unite to fight the managers,” according to Diane Lapis, who spent many years researching the camp before finally mounting a fascinating installation at the Beacon HIstorical Society.
I spoke with Diane recently to learn a little more about the camp. If the below sparks your interest, please go see this exhibit before it closes on December 20!
Beaconites: How did you first become aware of Camp Nitgedaiget, and what drew you to this project?
Diane Lapis: When I moved here about 17 years ago, people would ask me if I had heard of it, and I hadn’t. One of our friends from the Beacon Historical Society was doing research at the Library of Congress on teenage summer camps and discovered a misplaced folder labeled “Communist Camps.” That drew his attention, and it was also labeled “Beacon.”
He took pictures of the 72 photos in the folder and forwarded them to me. The images were so compelling that I had to figure out what Camp Nitgedaiget was all about. That was about 10 years ago. I started interviewing local people who lived near the camp—one gentleman was about 90 and had been a kitchen worker there. It started with research, looking up the very few articles that existed, and finding photographs.
What are the camp’s origins?
The camp was started in 1922 by an association called the United Workers Cooperative Association. In those days, we didn’t really have unions, but they had associations that would help people in certain industries or immigrant groups. This group was for the needle trades—garment workers, furriers—and mostly for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Countries like Russia, Poland and Romania.
Their goal was to provide better working conditions in factories as well as better housing. In 1922, they decided to buy 250 acres of land in Beacon to provide an opportunity for these workers to escape the city. These workers were living in tenements and working in bad conditions; they really had no way to vacation. For many, having come from Europe, it was their first time vacationing ever.
So this was a retreat for immigrant garment workers, but it was also heavily political, right?
Exactly. They started the camp to provide fresh air and sunshine. However, it was sponsored by the Communist Party USA. So, we have this mix of vacationing, but at the same time, “let’s do some Marxist dramaturgy while we’re at it.” Everywhere you went there were red banners, pictures of Lenin, and the red flag.
The camp was so successful that they would have up to a thousand people a day. It cost about $14 a week. They raised enough money that they took the profits and bought land in the Bronx to build a housing development. That came second. It was called “The Coops,” or the Communist Cooperatives.
What was daily life like at Camp Nitgedaiget?
The camp had a lot of facets. As a camper, you could take a taxi up from the Bronx, or take the steamship up the Hudson River to Newburgh and ferry across. When you registered at the business office, you’d get a towel and a bar of soap. You could stay in a tent, a bungalow, or the hotel, which was a four-story building built around 1927. They had a dining hall that could feed up to 800 people at a time.
There was a casino, also known as a dance hall, and a swimming pool made by damming up the creek on the mountainside. The idea was to develop strong, healthy workers who would unite to fight the managers. The camp was divided by Route 9D: the mountainside had the pool, casino, and office; the riverside had the hotel, the lake, and the dining hall. They would have social directors come up to lead choral groups and theater groups, all teaching The Communist Manifesto.
Did the camp interact with the local Beacon community, or was it a bubble?
It was kind of a bubble. I found advertisements in the Beacon Evening Journal saying “Please come to our dances,” but I couldn’t find evidence of locals actually going. I even checked with the Beacon Hebrew Alliance to see if their members interacted with the camp, and I didn’t find any connection. It was really for workers coming up from the city.
However, there were editorials in the local paper touting the economic benefits. With a thousand people a day, they were buying their milk, whiskey, and newspapers locally. We did an archaeological study and found milk bottles from Emmadine [a dairy farm in the area] and soda bottles from Newburgh. They were benefiting the community, but the community wasn’t too happy about having Jewish Communists in their presence.
In the beginning, Communism didn’t have a bad reputation, but that changed. By 1939, when the Hitler-Stalin pact was created, people decided, “Wait a minute, Communism isn’t such a good thing.” The camp actually changed its name from Camp Nitgedaiget to Camp Beacon in 1939 to appear less political. The Daily Worker advertisements would even say: “Camp Beacon, formerly Camp Nitgedaiget,” as if people didn’t know.
Was there a connection between this camp and the other famous Jewish camps in the Catskills?
You wouldn’t want to confuse it with the Socialist camps. Camp Unity and Camp Nitgedaiget were Communist. The rest were more Socialist-bent, and that was like oil and water. If you weren’t Communist, you wouldn’t come to Nitgedaiget. I learned there were even divides within families—Leninites and Trotskyites who couldn’t talk at the same dinner table.
Is anything left of the camp today?
All the buildings are gone. If you look for the “Notch Trail” sign on Route 9D, you might find the pool if you wander off, and across the street, you can see the concrete stumps left from the dining hall. The camp closed in 1950 and was sold to buyers who never made a go of it. Over time, arson took the buildings—mostly high school kids in the neighborhood who were bored in the 60s.
What has been the most surprising part of this research for you?
Finding this hyper-local story that nobody knew about was really exciting. The archaeological dig was fascinating—finding perfume bottles, Noxzema jars, and whiskey bottles allowed us to see the material culture of the people who stayed there.
We also brought the camp song back to life. I found the sheet music but no recording, so we had a local studio record it with a piano player and a cantor. It’s a “Comrades, let’s work together” kind of rah-rah song.
But the most moving moment was when a gentleman visited the exhibit who had grown up in the Bronx Coops. He pointed to a photo and said, “That composer was my father’s best friend. The writer of that song was my piano teacher.” He even recognized himself in a kindergarten picture.
It really brought it to life. These things really happened.
Eugene Orenstein, who attended Camp Nitgedaiget as a child, with photo of himself.
More on the BHS website: Beacon’s Camp Nitgedaiget: A Vanished Utopia
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