In the early 1920s a group of Methodist ministers leased land at the head of Wallowa Lake for a summer institute, and within two years had raised $1,800 to buy 110 acres for a permanent camp. A circus tent was the first program space. Lots west of the river were leased to families and churches to pay for a water system and a bridge, and by 1932 there was an assembly hall and a row of cabins built by congregations from western Idaho and eastern Oregon.
The camp passed to the Idaho Conference in 1952, and timber sold from the property paid for the Lesley Bailey Lodge, dedicated in 1959. By the early 1990s the buildings were aging and the income lagging; a master plan and a fundraising drive began what the camp calls a transformation over the twenty years that followed. Today it is a partnership of the Oregon-Idaho Conference of The United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon, on more than sixty acres at the foot of the Eagle Cap, open May through September to adults, families, youth and nonprofit groups, with cabins, rustic rooms and meals in the lodge. Peggy and David Lovegren direct it.
The camp’s history page acknowledges the Wallowa Valley as “the ancestral home of Chief Joseph and the Wallowa band of Nimiipoo (Nez Perce) people,” in the camp’s spelling. It gives an approximate beginning rather than a founding year, and no state registration for the camp appears in the atlas’s snapshot.
Through time
Methodist ministers leased land for the first Wallowa Lake Epworth League Institute; 110 acres were bought within two years, according to the camp.
The camp became the Methodist Camp Association under the Western District, by its own account.
