While exploring through the archives of the library I had some questions in mind. What was the reasoning behind moving the Paul Bunyan Camp? Who maintained the camp? What made people interested in the camp? Well I found an artifact that helped me draw new answers.
The artifact I mentioned is a letter written by “The Paul Bunyan Committee”to the chair of the committee in 1938. In the letter the committee talks about activity revolving around the camp. The letter’s first paragraph mentions the thriving success of the camp, stating that the camp is a great attraction and schools from across the state are coming to learn about Eau Claire’s past. It goes on to thank people for donations and discuss topics of concern such as: a lack of postcards, storage for equipment, and maintenance. What was most interesting about the letter is in the fourth paragraph the committee states that no longer have to house the construction men of Carson Park. I am curious to why the Paul Bunyan Camp was providing housing to construction workers in Carson Park. Possibly the construction workers were working on the football field, it might be something to look into later.
This letter helped me get a better understanding on why the camp might have possibly been moved. With the camp becoming as busy as ever, somewhere in the future it becomes to popular for it’s size, so it must need to expand. That being said, it also could have to do with a lack of donations later in time, you can only gather so much history about one topic. I was however able to find the answer to maintained the camp, and why it was so appealing. With the help of new donations regularly and the word being spread out from school to school the camp was able to draw much attention to places of education and gain interest in kids across the state.
With questions still unanswered I am excited to go digging for more information on the camp. Hopefully within the next two or so sources of mine I will be able to figure out why the camp was located to Carson Park, and how they were able to move it there.
This is pretty good post, it seems that you did a good job finding a beneficial source for your research. I would suggest going into more detail when you introduce your source. Give the reader some back ground information about that source. You gave some information on it but I think it would be beneficial if you gave just a bit more information on it. Also I didn’t see anywhere in your post where you discuss rhetorical context, I suggest you talk a bit about this, what is the purpose, intended audience etc. I am curious as to if this is a primary or secondary source? It sounds like a primary source because it is a letter from that time. One last suggestion I have would be talking about “with the grain and against the grain” points from what you found. I realize there probably wont be any bias because this isn’t an article it’s simply a letter.