Ten Mile Point, New York facts for kids
Ten Mile Point (also called Tenmile Point) is a beautiful spot on the shore of Skaneateles Lake in New York. It was a very popular place for picnics and lake trips in the late 1800s and early 1900s. You can find it where a small valley meets the lake, on land made of sand and dirt carried by water.
County Road 72, known locally as "10 Mile Point Road," runs right through it. This land used to belong to the Skaneateles Railroad and Steamboat Company. They built a dock for steamboats, a dance hall, and planted many trees here. They even planned to build a hotel, but it never happened. In 1906, the Auburn and Syracuse Electric Railroad Company bought Ten Mile Point. Today, it is home to Lourdes Camp, a special place run by the local Roman Catholic church group. In 1990, the "Six Town Picnic," a big event held every year from 1885 until World War II, was brought back to Ten Mile Point.
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Lourdes Camp: A Fun Place for Kids
In 1942, a large piece of land at Ten Mile Point, owned by the F. Harris Nichols family, was given to Catholic Charities. This group is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse, which is a church area led by a bishop. The land was meant to be a summer camp for children.
How Lourdes Camp Started
The new camp was named Lourdes Camp and opened its doors in the same year, 1942. It took the place of "Morning Star Manor," which was another Catholic camp for children located at Little York on Tully Lake. Later, the camp grew even bigger when another fifty acres of land were added.
What Lourdes Camp Offers Today
Today, Lourdes Camp has about 100 acres (40 ha) of land and 1,500 feet (460 m) of lakefront. It has many buildings, including nineteen cabins where campers sleep, a health center (infirmary), a chapel for prayer, a dining hall, a boat house, a main lodge, and modern bathrooms. For many years, boys and girls had separate camping times during the summer. But now, it is a coeducational camp, meaning both boys and girls attend at the same time.
In 2018, Lourdes Camp celebrated its 75th anniversary! Recently, the boat house was rebuilt, and the bathrooms were updated. A new bathroom building was also added.
Activities at Camp
Lourdes Camp offers seven weeks of sleepaway camp for boys and girls aged 7 to 14. They also have day camp for kids aged 7 to 11 during the same seven weeks. Campers who stay overnight can come for one week at a time. Their week usually ends on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday morning. Sleepaway campers arrive on Sunday mornings.
Campers can enjoy many exciting activities. These include swimming, canoeing, sailing, volleyball, archery, and basketball. There's also a ropes course, which is a fun challenge for older campers. It has both a lower ropes course, closer to the ground, and a high ropes course, which is higher up in the trees.
