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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Travelers found rest at �tourist camps� One of my early memories concerns a long automobile trip our family and another group made in Texas in the late 1920s or early �30s. I have no idea where we were going or why, only that we traveled a long way and spent the night at a place called "Tourist Cabins." There were a dozen or so small cabins on a rather large plot of ground with trees and green grass. The cabins had two beds, a tiny bathroom, a table and a mirror � that was it. The showers were located in a central building. Also popular back then were "tourist camps" usually operated in conjunction with cabins. The camps were simply marked squares of turf, each with a fire pit dug in the ground. The customers furnished tents and bedding. Recently I thought about that early family trip and wondered whether Jackson County had developed similar tourist cabins and camps in the 1920s and �30s. This led to a visit to the Southern Oregon Historical Society, where the librarians found for me numerous photos of tourist cabins and camps that looked a lot like the ones that I remembered in my home state some 70 years ago. I learned that Medford�s first auto camp was built in 1915 by the owners of Merrick�s Natatorium on Riverside Avenue north of Jackson Street. The Natatorium contained a large swimming pool, a dance hall and other amenities. Those spending the night at the auto camp could also use the facilities in the building. In an article for the magazine Southern Oregon Heritage, Stephen Mark wrote that by 1927, there were 40 auto cabins and camps operating in Jackson County. One of them was Camp Withus, which was advertised as being just north of the city limits on the northwest corner of Riverside Avenue and McAndrews Road. There travelers could rent small cabins with garages for $1 a night. The garages actually were lean-tos attached to the sides of the cabins. One dollar a night seems a real bargain now, but one should remember that an average wage was somewhere around $20 to $25 a week back then. Cities started to provide camping areas as a way to draw tourists. At first, the campsites were free. The city of Ashland opened a 92-acre camping area in Lithia Park in 1915 where autos could stop on their way to the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. There was no charge to use the camp and no restrictions on length of stay. Grants Pass also opened a municipal auto camp in 1915. It was built as part of Riverside Park. Both Grants Pass and Medford began charging for the use of their camps in 1923, and the two cities began building cabins in 1925. Lithia Park�s auto camp offered a community house with gas stoves, a daily run by a laundry wagon, a store, and, of course, the town�s mineral water. My wife, Nora, and I arrived in Medford in January 1963, and sometime in that first year, a story I covered for television was the tearing down of a group of cabins on North Riverside near McAndrews. Although I can�t be sure of the name of the camp, looking at old tourist publications seemed to confirm that the buildings were probably Camp Withus, which had been a Medford landmark for some 40 years. I also remember filming the destruction of small cabins on South Riverside near the entrance to what was then the McGrew Brother�s lumber mill and later became the Kmart location. Though auto camps and cabins are long gone now, camping in federal and state parks and in privately owned facilities today is big business in Oregon � as you know if you�ve ever tried to reserve a space at the height of the summer season. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA