Coeur d’Alene Tribe likely buyer of WSU’s lakeside Camp Larson

PULLMAN – Washington State University has found a buyer for the 40-acre lakeside summer camp it has owned and managed since the 1950s.

At a meeting Friday, the WSU Board of Regents is expected to approve the sale of Camp Roger Larson to the Coeur d’Alene Tribe for $1.4 million in cash and another $1 million pledged toward Native American studies at WSU.

For many, news of the sale is bittersweet. Over the past seven years, the Larson family and supporters of Camp Larson have watched as the university struggled to decide what to do with the camp, which WSU officials said needed more than $2.5 million in repairs and improvements to get up to code.

The camp, designed for children with disabilities, was founded in 1955 when Professor Roger C. Larson and four of his colleagues read a newspaper ad about the land on Cottonwood Bay at the south end of Lake Coeur d’Alene. The day the teachers checked out the property, each wrote the owner a personal check for $1,000 as a down payment.

Then they went to the university and asked the school to buy the camp for use as a field education site for students training to be teachers or physical therapists. Among the trees and near the beach, they built the camp’s 25 buildings with large donations of time and money from charities and community clubs throughout the region.

At first, they called it Camp Easter Seal, but in the 1980s WSU regents renamed it Camp Roger Larson in honor of the late professor who was so dedicated to his students and campers. The camp served for five decades as a summer retreat, primarily for children with diabetes and muscular dystrophy but also for children with other health concerns.

Students working at the camp were exposed to a wide range of disability and disease, said Larson’s daughter, Chris Larson, adding that it was the best preparation for their life’s work.

Larson’s daughter remembers spending entire summers with her family at the camp. “Dad always called it a place in the sun,” she said. “It was magical. It’s the first place in my growing up that I felt completely myself and completely comfortable.”

Chris Larson recalls her mother, Lucille, running the kitchen, her older sister, Mary Clare, working as a counselor, and her younger sister, Margi, managing the small camp store. After working with Margi at the store for several years, Chris graduated to work as the waterfront supervisor.

Roger Larson, who managed the camp, liked to keep the ratio at four children with disabilities to every one child without, said his daughter. “He wanted them to be in the majority, to feel like this place was theirs.”

But in the 1990s, the buildings fell out of code and WSU ran into liability problems, including a $2 million lawsuit filed by a woman who injured her ankle at the camp as a child. Though the injury was minor, the suit, which WSU ultimately lost, brought up questions of maintenance at the camp. When the school figured out the costs of improving a property that wasn’t even in Washington state, administrators started talking about a sale. The university closed the camp to all uses a couple of years ago.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe welcomed news that the camp was for sale, eager to have the chance to recover a part of its ancestral lands, said Eric Van Orden, legal counsel for the tribe.

The Coeur d’Alene Reservation is close to Camp Larson, but the tribe owns only one other property right on the lake, he said. In the interest of enhancing the tribe’s connection to the lake and protecting the land, the tribal council jumped at the chance to buy the camp.

The general plan now is to use it as a community camp with programs for youths said Terri Parr, a tribal legislative officer who works out of the chairman’s office. One of the programs might be the sobriety camp for alcohol treatment for families that the tribe offered elsewhere this summer, she said. Though the tribal council is waiting for the sale to be finalized before fully assessing the cabins, dining hall and recreation buildings, the members are already thinking about scheduling programs there next summer.

The tribe’s offer wasn’t the only one for Camp Larson, said Mel Taylor, director of special projects at WSU. Some came from private interests and a few were for more money than WSU’s final deal with the tribe, but the university administration felt that selling the camp to the Coeur d’Alenes was in the best interest of the school and the community.

Both university officials and the tribe spokespeople said they were excited about the $1 million donation to WSU to enhance education for Native American students. The programs could include scholarships on campus as well as offerings on tribal lands.

Ideally, there would be a way for WSU to keep the camp, said Chris Larson. But if the camp has to be sold, Roger Larson would have liked that it was going to a community that was historically underserved, she said. “Selling it to the tribe is in keeping with his spirit.”