A little History of Longacres

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Below are the four pages from one of the very first Longacres brochures, printed in 1940 just before the 2^nd World War. Notice what tuition was back then? Fourteen dollars a week, or $80 for the full eight week season!

Longacres was founded by my great aunt, Laura Longaker. Yup. That’s where “Longacres” came from, a tribute to my great grandfather, George Longaker! Laura was a young school teacher who had been a camp counselor all during college at the non-profit Camp Gohadego in the Alleghaney Mountains. In 1939 Laura had hoped to become director of Gohadego, but someone else got the job, so with my grandmother’s help, Laura found and purchased the property in East Aurora and started her own camp. She ran it for the first two seasons with a little help from her sister (my grandmother), and then lightning struck.

Laura fell in love with F. Marvin Adams, a great guy, but a guy who wanted no part of running a children’s summer camp! Well, my grandparents, Jacqueline and Frederick Kranz, had lent Laura $5000 to buy the land and put up the first cabins. They were faced with a choice of selling the land at a loss or continuing the new business. They talked and decided they would run the camp themselves for “just a year or two”. The rest, as they say, “is history”.

Enjoy reading the first brochure below. We’ll be posting much more history of Longacres in the coming weeks.

- Tom Kranz (great nephew and grandson of the founders)

Below is the brochure cover from 1942 after my grandmother, Jacqueline Kranz, had taken over the responsibility for the business. Note the reassuring little comment about a “secluded inland camp”. My grandmother was a prolific writer and pioneering newspaper woman and a very successful self promoter!

How Longacres grew, changed, and shrunk again over the years

The very first year back in 1939 when my great aunt Laura moved from her job at Go-ha-de-go to start her own camp at Longacres, we had only 20 to 25 campers. For a general camp, that’s very small, though it sounds very big compared to the nine students plus staff we have now. But the camp grew quickly, especially after my grandmother took it over and applied her promotional skills.

By the time of the second brochure (just above), the camp had an enrollment of fifty, and my earliest memories dating from the time when I was five and six years old in 1950 and 1951 are of a good sized camp with 80 to 100 campers in several units. The 1950’s and early 60’s were good times for summer camps, with a growing US economy and riding standards of living. The camp usually had about 120 students during this time.

I became active in the management of the camp with my grandmother from the time I graduated high school in 1963 and worked with her year round during my college years. At that time we split the camp into two units, a junior camp for girls through age 12 and a senior camp unit for teenagers. My grandmother and my aunt Neale ran the junior camp and I managed the senior camp unit. Both units grew during the late 60’s and the beginning of the 1970’s, until the total camp population in 1972 was 150 campers and 70 counselors and staff. We ran two shifts for meals in the dining hall.

We also had two separate riding departments, with the senior camp riding located not far from the original camp area near the dining hall. What we now call the “old junior barn” was the senior camp riding area. The junior camp riding area was located on what is now the “galloping field” area. The old junior equipment barn is still standing and hidden in the trees near the “tunnel of love” on the trails. Each riding department had 40 horses, all owned by Longacres for a total of 80 horses in the Longacres program. And, yes, we sent them all out for the winter to winter horse homes. Finding all those homes was a major undertaking!

Recession!

The major economic downturn and recession of 1973 through the late 70’s changed private summer camps forever in the United States. In one year, 1972 to 1973, our enrollment was cut in half. Many middle class families that had sent their kids to camp could no longer afford it. A double whammy to summer camps was the fact that this was a time when upscale families had many more choices for their children’s summer vacations.

Before this time, families who could afford it sent their children to camp and perhaps took an additional short family trip. But from the 1970’s on, teen and youth travel and vacation options exploded, with trips to Europe and around the world common. There was also a huge increase in local summer recreation programs during this period. Traditional children’s summer camps were no longer the only thing, or even the usual thing for kids in the summer.

Trying on Different Sizes:

For a few years, Longacres and many other camps that had been in business for years tried to fight the trend. We worked hard to see if we could gain back the big enrollments of the 60’s and early 70’s. But we also began to experiment with smaller enrollments. Longacres tried offering more riding as an extra option, though we were no where near guaranteeing the five hours a day for everyone that we offer now.

Thanks to Mud Racing!

Tom’s involvement in promoting four wheel drive truck races began in the mid 70’s about the time that camp enrollments dropped. This was a good thing for the camp, since the truck racing business was successful from the start and subsidized the camp while Longacres went through some lean times. Mud Racing allowed Longacres the luxury of experimenting with smaller enrollments and running at a loss when necessary.

Longacres enrollment declined during the late 1970’s and through the mid 1980’s to about 40 riders with about an equal number of horses. We were still a two hour a day riding camp, but many took our “extra riding” option and road most of the day. I am looking for records that show when we made the formal decision to cut our enrollment to the 20 to 25 rider level. It was in the mid to late 1980’s, and when we did, we increased the amount of riding time and dropped nearly all the traditional camp activites not associated with horses.

And when we made that drop in enrollment, a funny thing happened. We made more “profit” with less people. Profit, of course is a vague term in a summer camp, since we didn’t really make a living from the camp, but we “lost” less money! So we tried even fewer students, and in the very early 1990’s, Longacres downsized again and became the “Where Else Can You Ride Five Hours a Day?” camp that it has remained to this day.

That’s about it for my writing and for my straining memory today! I’ll tell you much more about changes in the Longacres rding program oer the years and about the interesting history of the big Longacres Jumper Derby, about Olympic visitors to Longacres, and about Tom’s showing career in future installments.

- Tom