Camp Midvale (Ringwood, N.J.)

Andy Lanset, free lance radio producer and oral historian, conducted these interviews with funding from the New Jersey Historical Commission in 1987 and 1988. The resulting one hour documentary program was broadcast on WBAI, WFMU, WFUV in 1988, entitiled "Camp Midvale: An Oral History". Camp Midvale, located in Ringwood, New Jersey, was one of 400 camps worldwide established by the Nature Friends whose U.S. branch had been founded in 1910 by German-American socialists and trade unionists.

The organization's goals were to preserve wildlife and to provide workers with affordable outdoor recreation. Camp Midvale's 150 acres, with a clubhouse and hiking trails, was purchased in 1930 and served as a hub for Nature Friends' activities on the East Coast.

Nature Friends offered a political perspective, combining ecological "nature love" with progressive sympathies. "Fascist convictions" were outlawed in their by-laws. Hikers raised funds for such causes as the "Scottsboro Boys", the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, the Committee to Release the Rosenbergs, and the civil rights movement. Placed on the Attorney General's list of "subversive organizations" in 1947, Nature Friends saw its members severely harassed. Camp Midvale was given to the Ethical Culture Society in 1968 in hope that it would be preserved as an ecological retreat.