By Anne Morrissy | Photos courtesy of Camp Wandawega
A 1920s rustic resort. An illegal gambling den. A brothel. A family camp. A Catholic religious retreat. A grown-up summer camp. A gathering spot for creatives from around the country. A backdrop for photo shoots, ad campaigns, and even films and TV shows. A designation on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the past 100 years, Camp Wandawega, the 25-acre property on the north shore of Lake Wandawega just north of Elkhorn, has been through many eras and many reinventions, and its current version is the most ambitious and most far-reaching one yet.
It was over 20 years ago that the current owners, Tereasa Surratt and David Hernandez, rescued Camp Wandawega from utter dereliction. Since then, they have worked tirelessly to preserve and enhance the property and its buildings, to record the camp’s fascinating history and to foster a space that inspires community, creativity and nostalgia in equal measure. “We really are historical preservationists … that is our calling and our mission,” Surratt explains. And the camp has a fascinating history, which Surratt and Hernandez have worked with the state of Wisconsin to diligently research and fact-check, turning this work into a book and companion podcast, “American Getaway: 100 Years of Saints & Sinners at Camp Wandawega.”
From their research, Surratt and Hernandez learned that the camp started out modestly: the land was platted and purchased in 1925, and by 1927, the Wandawega Hotel was marketing itself to working- and middle-class Chicagoans who wanted “good fishing, [a] wonderful swimming beach… a real golf course… dancing every night… [and] plenty of airy rooms overlooking the lake,” according to an early ad. But the excesses of the Prohibition era soon changed the tenor of the resort. Throughout the late 1920s and the 1930s, the hotel became known, at least locally, for much more illicit forms of entertainment, as the main building’s hidden rooms and trap doors can attest.
However, by mid-century, the resort had returned to a more wholesome summer vacation destination once again, managed by a family of Polish immigrants. For about a decade, the property hosted mostly young families who sought a vacation at the Wandawega Lake Resort for swimming, canoeing, fishing and campfires, as well as a dining room that served authentic, homemade Polish cuisine.
In 1961, the resort was purchased by the Congregation of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, an order of Latvian Catholic priests, who used the property as a spiritual retreat and de facto summer camp. When the Marian Fathers acquired the property, Cardinal Archbishop Meyer of Chicago visited Lake Wandawega to bless and consecrate the land that had once catered to so many sinners.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, under the stewardship of the Marian Fathers, “Camp Vandavega” (as it was lovingly called) became a popular summer gathering spot and cultural center for Latvian immigrants and first-generation Latvians in Chicago. Families would come up to the lake together to experience classic American summer camp activities, mostly organized by the moms of the community, with a side of Latvian Catholic rituals like the popular “Mass in the Grass,” an outdoor church service performed by the priests.
Hernandez first visited Camp Wandawega as a young boy in this Latvian Catholic community in the 1970s. His love of the camp was so strong that, when the Marian Fathers expressed interest in selling the property in the early 2000s, he and Surratt drove up to look at it with an eye toward purchasing the camp. By that time, Camp Wandawega had seen better days. “It was really dilapidated,” Surratt explains. “Many of the buildings were missing windows, there were caved-in roofs, there were junked cars on blocks on the tennis court. The whole property — all 25 acres of it — was not just neglected, but heavily abused. It was a rough place. We didn’t even know at the time what we were getting ourselves into.”
Surratt and Hernandez bought the camp in 2004 and spent several years just clearing out all the trash and securing the buildings, trying to bring everything to acceptable safety standards. “It was a massive undertaking,” Surratt explains. “The truth is, we did not have a master plan. We just started tackling it. First, getting it safe and securing it. Uncovering it from under the rubble. And then we slowly started to piece it back together.”
Luckily, the couple was perhaps uniquely suited to the work of piecing Camp Wandawega back together, restoring it to a state as close to its midcentury heyday as they could approximate in the 21st century. Both Surratt and Hernandez worked in high-powered creative jobs in the advertising industry in Chicago, and counted among their hobbies a shared love of history and commitment to historic preservation. Camp Wandawega could easily have been sold and subdivided for upscale housing, but instead, Surratt and Hernandez embraced a restoration of the camp. They focused on a lo-fi, authentic experience, which they initially offered on Airbnb as “summer camp for grownups.” It turned out to be a hugely popular idea.
They built on that initial success by purchasing a home on adjacent property to the camp and converting it to the “Hill House,” a rentable cottage with more modern amenities. Next, they bought up small cabins and camp buildings from the recently closed camps nearby, like Camp Singing Hills and Camp Pottawatomi Hills on Pleasant Lake, painstakingly relocating them to Camp Wandawega. They wrote coffee table books and a children’s book about the camp. They started partnering with national brands to create Camp Wandawega- designed merchandise that evoked the souvenirs and camp necessities you would have found at camp 60 years ago (whenever possible, they even partnered with the original manufacturers of those vintage products).
Now, as the camp celebrates its 100th anniversary, Camp Wandawega, a 25-acre summer camp on the shore of a small Walworth County lake, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and seen by millions around the country through social media, brand campaigns, TV and movies. But Surratt and Hernandez are not resting yet; plans for the centennial year include the addition of one more house adjacent to the camp’s property; the release of commemorative, 100th anniversary souvenir merchandise; and, perhaps the most ambitious project of all: a new Camp Wandawega brick-and- mortar experience in a 100-year- old building in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood. “I’ve always wanted to open a kind of ‘Tourism Bureau,’” Surratt explains.
Looking back over the past 100 years at Camp Wandawega, Surratt says she and Hernandez are proud to be the stewards of a camp with such a storied history. “The irony is that this place that was once known in the area for all the wrong reasons is now, a century later, being celebrated by the state of Wisconsin and recognized on the National Register,” Surratt explains. “I think now we’re all in a place where we can just really appreciate the history and be grateful for this camp.
