Many adults living today have fond memories of summer days spent at the Niagara County Health Camp. This perennial favorite served thousands of youths from the county for over a half century. Beginning in the 1920s, the camp on East High Street, just outside the City of Lockport, was the summer home for hundreds of boys and girls. During the early years, the camp was open to help children convalescing from tuberculosis. Beginning in the 1950s, Niagara County operated the camp, to serve children from low-income or troubled families. Staffers remember seeing the faces of small children turn from despair to joy as the camp gave many of them their first chance to get out of the city and leave behind a difficult environment at home.

The Niagara County Health Camp consisted of 25 acres of land with a brick and frame single family home for the caretaker, two one-story cinder block buildings that housed the camp showers and eight one-story wooden buildings that were dormitories, kitchen, dining room, offices and activities buildings and an in-ground swimming pool. In its waning years, the camp provided twelve days of outdoor camping for disadvantaged children from Niagara County’s three cities and twelve towns. It employed 20 counselors and a full time nurse, with a doctor on call. Children were selected by area schoolteachers and county health officials.

After years of scrimping on needed maintenance, Niagara County legislators stated they were forced to close the Niagara County Health Camp in 1983 because of the expense to bring the site up to state codes. Wesley and Patricia Wright, former caretakers who lived at the camp for five years until 1982 noted, “It was probably the best two weeks of the year that (the children) had. They just needed love, that’s what they needed.”

Douglas Farley, Director
Erie Canal Discover Center
24 Church St.
Lockport NY 14094
716.439.0431
CanalDiscovery@aol.com
www.NiagaraHistory.org