Camp Walden On the Waterfront
Looking Back
Throughout 2026, the 55th year since our founding, this website will be updated with articles and photos looking back on the history of the lakes. This page features a reminiscence of Camp Walden, a 7-week, traditional overnight summer camp for girls ages 8-15 located on Sand Pond. The reminiscence was written by Genie Silver, who first attended the camp in 1959 as a 9-year-old. Genie and Michael Silver have a camp on Hancock Pond.
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For a complete history of Camp Walden, visit the Camp Walden website.
Camp Walden Memories
By Genie Silver
The following interview with Helen Herz, longtime director of Camp Walden on Sand Pond, was written by Genie Silver for the June 1999 edition of the Hancock & Sand Ponds Newsletter.
When I was nine years old and living in Baltimore, Maryland, Miss Helen Herz, a woman with blue eyes, white hair, and lively manner, came to my home with a treasure trove of slides of Camp Walden, a girls’ camp she directed in Denmark, Maine. After seeing the amazingly tall and beautiful pine trees, the lake front with a large sandy beach, docks, canoes, sailboats, and water skiing equipment, I was smitten!
Also, there was the Ark, the massive brown wood building which housed the theatre, dance and basketball activities, and the meandering brown bunk houses built on gentle, pine-needled slopes where girls from nine to fifteen lived for eight weeks. She told me about the camping trips to mountains and lakes and the weekends full of team sports - well, that was it for me. I made a sign and put it up above my bed at home: “June 26th, 1959, will be the most exciting day of my life!” - the day I was to leave for camp on the overnight train from New York City.
Now, it is almost 40 years later and I am still having a love affair with Camp Walden and the Lake Region, so much so that my husband and I bought land on Hancock Pond and built a home there. I can still canoe to Camp Walden for Schnecken (a cinnamon sweet roll) on Sunday mornings! In fact, on a warm July morning this past summer, I went to Walden and after filling up on a traditional Sunday morning feast of Schnecken, I climbed the old, worn pine staircase of Camp Walden’s Main House to meet with Miss Herz, now 84, and interview her about the history of the camp.
Miss Herz, whose aunt, Blanche Hirsch, founded the camp in 1916 with her partner, Clara Altschuler, began attending Camp Walden in 1925, and took over as camp director in 1938.
Wendy Cohen, Miss Herz’s daughter, is now Walden’s director, but it was clear as soon as I entered the second floor camp office, that Miss Herz is as indomitable as ever. Counselors and campers alike sought her opinions on where to buy certain supplies and when to photograph the campers, whose mothers, aunts and grandmothers attended the camp.
Because I was interviewing Miss Herz for the Hancock & Sand Ponds Association, she insisted that before we talk about Walden’s history, she tell me the story of the Hancock Pond Dam.
The dam, constructed of logs and wood, was originally built by a Hiram lumber mill that used the dammed water as a power source. . . . When the lumber company closed in the 1940s it decided to sell the dam. Walden bought 50% of the shares, Camp Blazing Trail bought some shares, as did other lake residents.
In summer, a quiet battle ensued in which lake swimmers dislodged and removed logs from the dam so more water would flow out and there would be a larger public beach. Once or twice a week, Walden maintenance workers replaced the logs. In the winter, all the wooden logs were removed so the ice wouldn’t destroy them. Finally, in the late 1950s, the state of Maine determined that all dams must be made of concrete and at that point, due to the prohibitive cost of building and maintaining such a dam, Walden got out of the dam business and sold all its shares to the lake residents.
At Walden, a brass bell located just outside one of the office windows rings throughout the day to remind campers and counselors that a new activity is beginning or that it’s time for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. As I listened to this long familiar sound, Miss Herz began to talk about Walden’s beginnings.
Blanche Hirsch and Clara Altschuler were followers of Henry Thoreau and they found that though camps in the North Woods existed in the early 1900s for underprivileged children, the children of greater wealth had little to do in the summer. So, in the winter of 1915, they came to Maine and searched for land they could buy to start a camp.
Miss Herz reports that the lumbermen who sold them the 45 acres and nearly one mile of lake front on Sand Pond for $800 thought the two were “stupid New York women.” (They were hardly that: Blanche Hirsch was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College and she ran a private school for girls, grades one through 12 in New York City, called Alcuin.)
When Blanche and Clara bought the land, it was lumbered to the extent that one could see all the way from the lake to the camp entrance on Berry Road.
Miss Herz thinks that Wyonegonic was founded about ten years before Walden, and Blazing Trail, now closed, came a few years later. She wanted me to know that the director of Blazing Trail, Eugenia Parker - Miss Herz called her G.G. - was a very special woman.
Blazing Trail, which occupied land on both Hancock and Sand Ponds, was a girls’ camp that emphasized water sports and outdoor living. Walden and Blazing Trail would join together for canoe festivals in the middle of the lakes.
Nineteen Sixteen was the first summer Walden opened to campers, age 16-18. There were five bunk houses and 35 campers. Miss Herz said that it was the mother of George Booth (owner of part of Douglas Hill) who helped them design the camp layout. Because Blanche Hirsch did not believe young women should be roaming the woods in the dark of night, she had indoor plumbing installed in each bunk house for toilets and sinks. This was unusual for the time. Most camps used outhouses.
Miss Herz had so much to tell me about days past that we agreed she would talk about more memorable events before World War II, and at a later time the would spend more time talking about the post-war years.
What I found most interesting was the trauma of the polio epidemic years, in the 1920s. One year was so dangerous that no one other than the campers and counselors were allowed in and out of camp - all supplies were picked up in Denmark.
In the 1930s, the whole area was devastated by a terrible hurricane. President Roosevelt ordered the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) men up to Denmark to help clear the land and help rebuild. Miss Herz reports that the town, distrustful of FDR and his liberal brand of politics, were leery of the CCC. Many of the men stayed at Walden.
In 1938, the Governor of Maine came to town to speak in front of the Town Hall and the whole camp turned out to see him. In response, in true politician’s style, he remarked: “The pig population in Denmark may be down, but the population of pretty girls is certainly up!”
Miss Herz had many stories to tell. The original caretaker of Camp Walden was Mr. Wentworth. His family in the Denmark area dates back to the American Revolution. Miss Herz sometimes stayed at his home (a farmhouse before the Monument, on the right near the Ingall’s home). She loved the secret compartment in the house that led to the barn and allowed the family to escape in case of attack by unfriendly visitors.
Mr. Pendexter was both Denmark’s Justice of the Peace and telephone operator. Well, Helen Herz was his good friend and used to sit with him while he connected one telephone party to the next. Miss Herz was privy to all the town gossip!
Continued below...
The Main House
Ms. Herz with Counselors & Campers
Camp Walden Memories Part 2
By Genie Silver
This is the second of a two-part interview with former Camp Walden Director Helen Herz that the Genie Silver wrote for the 1999 HSPA newsletter.
Last summer, I interviewed Helen Herz, the retired director of Camp Walden, about the early years of Walden before World War II. At that time, she promised to share her memories of camp during and since the war. So after breakfast, once more, I found myself climbing the worn and familiar pine stairs to the camp office on the second floor of the main building.
The window fans were going and Miss Herz, now 86 years old, was busy taking care of camp business. She reminded Wendy, her daughter who is now Walden’s director, that with parents’ weekend coming up, they needed to have the pictures of daughters of former campers ready for alumnae moms to see. The one thing that she has given up this morning was her daily tennis game - Miss Herz acknowledged it was just too hot.
Once the campers and counselors had gone up to the softball field for pictures, Miss Herz and I settled in to talk history. She had key memories of the last 50 years and I’ll do my best to describe them to you. I was there for her favorite memory, the total eclipse of the sun that occurred on July 20, 1963. The eclipse wasn’t visible from most of the country, but it was in northern Maine, and the camp made arrangements for those of us who’d got our parents’ permission to go see it. More on that in a little bit.
During World War II, there was rationing and people had points they could use toward the purchase of things like coffee, sugar and gas. Miss Herz had a point book, much like today’s checkbooks, to keep track of the points the camp used and who they were paid out to. Individual campers had points and while at camp, they turned these points over to the camp. Let’s say one point equaled one pound of sugar. For 80 campers, you could get 80 pounds of sugar. To save points, the camp purchased goods from wholesalers in Boston.
To save gas points, Miss Herz decided that instead of using the camp’s sole truck, they could use camp horses to pull wagons filled with supplies for campers who were on camp trips. One group of hikers who carried their gear to Pleasant Mountain were waiting for a replenishment of supplies to arrive - but not to be; coming out of the Walden camp road onto Berry Road, the horses spooked and took off, the wagon overturned and the supplies ended up all over the road. A local farmer helped the counselor salvage what she could, but that was the end of the horse and cart era at Walden.
The camp also tried to grow its own corn and beans, but weeds took over and there wasn’t much of a crop.
More successful were the campers’ efforts to raise money and goods for refugee children overseas. The girls picked beans at a local farm and the money they earned was sent overseas to refugee organizations. Miss Herz recalled, “We paired up best friends and they would work the rows together, the girls at opposite ends working toward each other.”
The camp also set up sewing machines in the screened-in recreation room where they made dresses for refugee children. They sewed each dress with a pocket in which they placed a bar of soap before sending the dresses to refugee camps in Europe.
A further responsibility campers took during the war was spotting planes from Pleasant Mountain. An Air Force officer came to camp to describe the differences between German and American planes. The campers took 24-hour watches and were on the lookout for planes over Portland Harbor.
A young girl whose family were refugees from Germany came to Walden during the war years. The girl took to carving her name on the infirmary floor, after which she had to sand it out. She kept on carving her name even though it took hours to remove it. When Miss Herz asked her why she continued to do this, she said, “I’m now living in a free world and if I don’t mind sanding it out, there’s no reason I can’t carve my name in the floor.” We forget how important one’s name is in a world where we are known by names and not only as members of racial, ethnic or religious minorities.
I asked Miss Herz if she had family in the war. She said, “Everyone had someone in the war. I had two brothers. When V-J (Victory in Japan) was announced, that’s when the Peace Circle got its name. We had built a campfire circle in preparation for Banquet Night and hadn’t used it yet.
We were in the dining room when the news came of the end of the war. We knew of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and were listening to the radio in anticipation of Japan’s surrender. We all got up, silently and automatically, and walked down the hill to the campfire site. We built a fire, sat in a circle, and sang patriotic and peace songs. That’s how it became known as the Peace Circle.”
One happy event that occurred during the war years was Helen Herz’s marriage in 1944 to Ed Cohen, an attorney who is a professor of Law at the University of Virginia. Ed seems to love Walden as much a Miss Herz and was her helpmate in one of Walden’s innovations after the war.
Miss Herz and Ed began reading up on the new sport of waterskiing and with Ed’s patience and perseverance the sport became a mainstay at camp.
First Ed and Helen talked with a man familiar with waterskiing who suggested that they buy foot-wide skis, much like today’s trick skis, from Abercrombie and Fitch, along with an instruction manual. Helen can still see Ed sitting on the canoe dock studying that book.
Next, they got a motor boat with a 15 hp motor and Frank, the camp caretaker, drove the boat while Ed flew behind him on the skis, holding the manual in one hand and the rope in the other. Campers and counselors began trying the new sport, and it was a big hit. Walden was the first camp in the area to offer waterskiing.
The Solar Eclipse of 1963
In the summer of 1963, on July 20, a total solar eclipse took place that was visible from northern Maine. This was a major scientific event that few campers would have the opportunity to see any other time in their
lives. Miss Herz was determined that all campers who wanted to see it, and who had their parents’ permission, would do so. Only 30 campers were forbidden to travel up north to see the eclipse and the camp set up a TV in the Ark so they could at least see it from afar. (The Ark is a large brown wooden building where indoor basketball, dance and the camp shows take place).
There were many and frequent warnings that it was very dangerous for people to look directly at the sun without protective eyewear. To get ready for the eclipse, we all made contraptions consisting of two paper plates with small rectangular eye slots cut into them. In between the plates, where the slots were cut out, we pasted in double exposed film to act as protective shields for our eyes. We pasted the plates together, then punched two holes on either side of the plates’ edge furthest from the eye slots. We ran a piece of sturdy string through the holes and tied off knots to make a large loop out of the string so we could wear the plates around our necks like you do with eye or sunglasses.
We were told that we had to face away from the sun and when the eclipse came we were to turn and look at the eclipse for no more than three seconds at a time, and a minute between each viewing. We practiced doing this for days before we took off for a field in northern Maine.
We traveled in Walden trucks to Madison, Maine. In those days we didn’t have vans and instead went on camp trips in large open-backed trucks. We piled all our gear in the middle of the back of the truck - cooking equipment and sleeping bags. We didn’t use tents in those days. As Miss Herz correctly pointed out, “You can’t see the stars if you’re sleeping in a tent!” Campers and counselors sat on built-in benches along the sides of the back of the trucks. In case of rain, we had tarps that could be hauled over the frame covering the back of the truck. It probably wasn’t very safe but we sure had a ball. One thing we loved to do was sing at the top of our lungs as we passed through sleepy Maine and New Hampshire towns early in the morning on the way to a canoeing or mountain climbing trip. But this time we were headed north three hours.
Miss Herz recalls a pit stop where the outhouse odor was so bad, people handed off nose clips as they raced in and out of the roadside facilities. Once up north we arranged our sleeping bags on the floor of a very large school gym floor.
The eclipse took place in the afternoon and we and others were ensconced in a large open field near the school. Miss Herz remembers that seconds before the eclipse began, “There was total silence. No birds were singing, then the wind blew.”
I was 12 years old the summer of ’63 and still feel the excitement of that adventure, as the eclipse became more and more total, darkness increasingly engulfed us. This was very weird because it was the middle of the day. Suddenly it was nighttime in daytime! It also got cold outside as the sun completely vanished behind the moon. The counselors were very careful in monitoring our threesecond viewing lest we injure our eyes.
The eclipse was a very special event, but some events take place year after year at Walden, one being the Denmark Fair, which has evolved over time since the 1930s. To raise money for their church, the women of Denmark put on a fair to which campers from Walden, Blazing Trail, Wabunaki, and Wyonegonic were invited. The churchwomen made pins, quilts, clothes, fudge and baked goods to sell at the fair. There were also short plays and dancing as entertainment. Unfortunately, when one of the well-padded Denmark ladies danced in a tutu, the campers made fun of her and that was the end of invitations to the campers.
After that Walden held a fair each summer on camp grounds and invited the women to sell their wares at camp. Over time, more and more of the churchwomen spent winters in the south and had less time to make things to sell at the fair. In recent years, the senior campers took over running and organizing the fair, which is held on the same day as the horse show.
The proceeds from the fair are used to support Walden’s Main Idea. This past year campers raised $700. The Main Idea was started 32 years ago by Miss Herz and other philanthropic alumnae. It’s a two-week camping experience at the end of August for girls from Maine, Boston and Harlem who come on scholarship, chosen by social service agencies in their area. The Main Idea embodies the Camp Walden philosophy which in large part stems from the personal philosophy Helen Herz grew up with and is proud to practice every day of her life. I asked Miss Herz about this philosophy. She said, “I was brought up in ethical culture. My parents believed and taught me that you try to make the world a better place because you live in it.”
Many Walden campers return to Walden to be counselors during the Main Idea. I asked Miss Herz about who these young women are, and what they are like. She turned her chair around and pulled out a thick folder from one of the office’s many filing cabinets.
She started to tell me about some of the young people who volunteer their time to show less privileged girls the joy of being at Walden for a few weeks in August. But then she said, “I don’t want the Main Idea to be an afterthought. It’s too special and important and deserves time unto itself.”
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