How grateful we are that our Camp Runoia founders were brave women who dared to venture out of their comfort zones. Pioneers of their time they chose to take a path that not many women had walked and left us a great legacy of strength and fortitude.
Early residential summer camps were primarily established to provide an opportunity for children from urban areas to be away from the cities and have an experience in nature. Initially it was boys who were provided with this opportunity but it wasn’t long before girls’ camps opened alongside them. It was strongly believed that living away from the conveniences of home in the ‘wilderness’ would build character and strong moral values. Perhaps unique in Runoia’s case was that women were our primary founders.
The 1907 world that Miss Weiser and Miss Pond lived in seems a million lifetimes away from the lives that our campers lead today.
Can you imagine that in 1907…
Women’s life expectancy was around 50
English suffragettes stormed British Parliament and many were arrested 
Julia Ward Howe was the first woman elected to National Institute of Arts & Letters
Theodore Roosevelt was president
The passenger liner RMS Lusitania made its maiden voyage from England to NYC
Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne were born
Rudyard Kipling received the Nobel prize for literature
Good Housekeeping magazine cost $1 for an annual subscription
Trade unions were established
Oklahoma become the 46th state
It is amazing that the values promoted by residential summer camps in 1907 are the same as they are in 2017
Camp helps build self-confidence and self-esteem
Camp is a safe environment
Camp is a place to build social skills and make friends
We hope that Camp Runoia will continue to provide girls with the opportunity to bravely follow in the footsteps of the pioneering women who came before us. We hope that we may all have strong female role models and be them too.