This interesting phrase caught my eye when reading the other day. When I first read it, I found my brain automatically going to the laboratory. The Manhattan Project must’ve had an official “Los Alamos Organization & Procedure”, right? There’s probably a procedure manual on every desk today. Or, I suppose it’d be located on a hard drive these days. But surely LANL would need plenty of organizational procedures.

I’m sure they did and still do. But that particular phrase actually referred to something Fermor Church and Lawrence Hitchcock came up with to describe the summer camp at the Los Alamos Ranch School. In reading about the way camp was set up and run, I couldn’t help but contrast it to modern summer camp experiences.

The Three Trip Summer Camp

I’ve talked before about the big overnight pack trips at camp and at the Ranch School in general. In my post about the Los Alamos Diamond Hitch, I discussed plenty about the why of summer camps at Los Alamos. It was primarily financial. And honestly, a good bit of the “how” of summer camps at the ranch school can be credited to the structure of Boy Scouting. Scouting was really developing during that time and Connell required every summer camper to be registered for scouting. In 1919 Connell wrote a letter to one parent stating, “All of our boys are expected to become Scouts the first month of camp. I have just discovered…that [your son] is the only one who has made absolutely no effort to do so. I have told him that he will have to be prepared before tomorrow or he cannot go on the long trip.”

The “long trip” was the final camping trip of the summer camp season. A two week trek by horseback with pack train across the Espanola Valley to the Pecos. If you have ever looked at a map of our region, you might be able to imagine just how grueling that trip would be. On their return, the boys would stop in Santa Fe to enjoy a dance given by the Girl Scouts before heading back to the ranch school.

Scouting provided a list of necessary skills for outdoor survival, a method for learning them, and milestones to track progress. It also provided the ranking and organizational system that would become the heart of the Los Alamos Organization and Procedure.

Hard Life Lessons

Summer camp students, like school year students, were assigned to one of three patrols. Spruce Patrol was reserved for the older and more experienced boys. Pine Patrol was made up of boys with an intermediate range of skills. Fir Patrol was made up of young boys at least 12 years old and up. Patrols were assigned at the beginning of the camp season. From there, a ranking list would come out before each of the three trips. Between trips the boys would earn as many scouting awards and new skills as possible in order to get the best ranking prior to the upcoming trip.

Ranking lists could be changed during the pack trips depending on development and accomplishment of the boys. For the most part rankings determined who was boss of smaller groups within the patrol. There was a rank for everything, even who was boss between the two boys assigned to each tent. Jobs were assigned and lists were posted before the patrols left the ranch school on their trips. At the end of the summer, the staff would hand out awards based on attitude and accomplishments during the summer trips. Awards could be “best camper”, “cleanest tent”, best horseman, “best fisherman”, “best trail cook”, and so on. One kiddo got an award for “best camper” because Connell “bawled him out” all summer long and he never complained to staff, the other campers, or his parents. That sort of suggests what was valued in a camper. I wonder how modern teenaged boys would stack up?

Modern methods would suggest letting the boys “work out who is in charge” because we tend to hope that our kids develop leadership skills in a loosely structured environment. But then, “modern” methods would likely be shocked at the idea of sending 12 year olds with a group of twenty something fresh college graduates miles and miles over rough terrain via horseback where if someone got a snakebite it was likely to end in amputation of the limb at a minimum. There were no helicopter rescues, ambulances, or GPS beacons. If your child didn’t follow the rules, he was toast!

Motivational Pep Talks or Full Metal Jacket?

In 1942, Camper Bill Carson wrote home to tell his parents that during morning announcements, “every boy in the camp was told his faults and what he should do to improve”. AJ Connell was very vocal on his ideas that this was the ultimate way to change boys into men. How are men to improve themselves if nobody ever tells them what they’re doing wrong after all? Connell believed that selfishness was the worst fault a boy could have. Connell told the boys that selfishness was rampant in the world and it was their job to work against it.

Some of Connell’s comments seem right on. Others not so much. I think it’s difficult to digest some of these ideas because they’re from such a long time ago and a very different “world”. If my kiddo came home and told me of such a thing happening at school or at summer camp, I’d probably be on the phone to the director to ask why on earth someone was shaming my kid in public!

And yet, in 1930 Connell sent a young man home from summer camp and told his parents, “[Your son] has been…extremely disobedient, which has resulted in one accident, fortunately not as serious as it might have been. Against absolute orders plainly announced to all, and after being reminded by one of the boys, he insisted on trying to ride and jump a horse that was assigned to another boy, resulting in the horse kicking one of the boys and inflicting a painful injury. In a camp of this kind disobedience is dangerous.” Connell went on to add, “it is very seldom that I have dismissed boys from the camp…only…in cases where necessary for the protection and safety of the boys entrusted to me.”

Perhaps it’s tough to remember that a summer camp experience like the one offered at Los Alamos was a privilege for boys in the early 1900’s. It was the sort of privilege that had to be respected by following rules set out to protect everyone involved. Not just the boys, but the staff, the livestock, and the land.

In 1925 a former camper applied for a military commission in the early days of WWII. Ranch School Master Fermor Church sent camp records with a letter of recommendation that stated: “He made a very good camper and received valuable instruction in caring for himself and equipment under mountain conditions, in the New Mexico Rockies. The camp work stressed discipline, leadership, and general responsibility of both the individual and the group.” It’s such a simple statement without flowery language and yet what a reference in support of a young man who had goals of being in charge of a military unit!

Think about modern reality shows like “Survivor” or “The Amazing Race”. My belief is that the ranch school campers would’ve survived “Naked and Alone” far more successfully than the folks picked for that experience to date. Connell would’ve had them making loincloths out of moss and tree sap!

Lawrence Sill “Hitch” Hitchcock

It seems as though this hypothesis was proved true by a man the campers and students called “Hitch”. Pond and Connell recruited him from Yale where he’d just completed his bachelors degree. He was a Classics scholar, not an outdoorsman. In 1930 he attended the American School for Classical Studies in Rome. He came to the Los Alamos Ranch School because he thought the idea sounded exciting. I suppose you could probably consider him like one of the Greek classical heroes. Traveling to the ‘wild west’ from the ‘civilized’ East Coast area where he’d grown up.

From 1919 until 1943 Hitch taught most of the classes at Los Alamos. His teaching passion was always Latin and he served as headmaster from 1927 until 1943. Once the job at LARS was no longer available due to the Manhattan Project, Hitch went into full time military service. Pond and Connell had always encouraged their school masters to continue their education. After beginning at LARS, Hitch got a masters degree in 1936 in Classics, also from Yale. He studied at the University of Chicago, and he was in the US Army Training Corps and the Army Reserves. That East Coast boy embraced everything the West had to teach him and kept going in the best of ways!

Eventually Hitch continued to be critical to just about everything. He was an Army Colonel and eventually served as the Army Secretary General for a time. He was part of the Inter-American Defense Board and the CIA. He even helped to supervise the construction of CIA headquarters at Langley! Plus, he was a board member of the Los Alamos Foundation from 1940 to 1973 because, as most of us locals have figured out, Los Alamos gets under your skin and becomes an intrinsic part of who you are.

The Real Traditions of Los Alamos

I think what has begun to fascinate me is the long standing tradition of education, outdoor enjoyment, tenacity, resilience, and passion that have always been part of this place. Our modern minds tend to focus so closely on the LANL part of our history. But people have been drawn to this area since before the first settlers in Frijoles Canyon started living in and around the ruins we now call Bandelier. Los Alamos challenges us. And maybe sometimes these challenges change over the years, but they still exist and they still bring us to this place where a good number of us fall in love with the region and never want to leave!

If Los Alamos is calling your name, give me a call! I’m a hometown girl who loves all of the unique and sometimes unexpected things that come with life in Los Alamos. I’d love to chat real estate and life on the Pajarito Plateau with you! If you’d like to read more about the history of the Ranch School, my quotes come directly from John D Wirth and Linda Harvey Aldrich’s book, “Los Alamos: The Ranch School Years 1917-1943”. You can find it at the Historical Society’s website or in the museum at Fuller Lodge. If you haven’t been there, please stop by and visit!