Camp Marston Has Influenced San Diego County Youth For 100 Years

JULIAN, CA — When 200 people gathered Sunday to mark a first century of Camp Marston in the mountains of San Diego County, it felt like a tight-knit class reunion.

That’s because Camp Marston is not only old but has grown to one of the most popular YMCA-run camps for children in Southern California, a place where people return year after year as lodgers, counselors or both. They establish bonds by laying aside phones and PCs to focus on the 250-acre expanse of pines and oaks at 4,100 feet above sea level in Julian.

“They have such fond, formative memories from the camp that stay with them throughout their lives,” said Tom Madeyski, executive director for overnight camps with the San Diego County YMCA. “The real magic comes from the social relations and the environment that we create here among people.”

Sixth graders stay at Camp Marston for outdoor school and the YMCA operates summer camps for children. Counselors ages 19 to 21 mentor the children as they climb a tower or shoot BB guns. Camping "under the stars" adds to people's bonds, said Madeyski, who has worked with the camp for 31 years.

“No electronics, no distractions,” he said. “When children come to camp, they take no cell phones, no computers, no iPads, so it goes back to old-school interaction.”

Camp Marston alumnus Laura Morton, a summer student from 1990 and later a counselor, found that the people she met gave her role models she couldn’t get from family or teachers.

“It was impressed on me what kind of influence camp counselors have,” said Marston, 45, of Carslbad. “I developed this attitude or mantra that I wanted to be person that I needed when I was a kid. I found camp was a special place from the very beginning.”

Morton returned as a camper in 1991, as a volunteer counselor in 1992 and 1993 and as a paid counselor from 1994 through 2002. She recalls especially helping new arrivals get over their initial nights of homesickness by making sure they enjoy their time at Camp Marston.

She met her eventual husband, a counselor from the UK, at the same camp. “It’s definitely been a home away from home for the past 30 years,” she said.

The site about 90 minutes by car from San Diego opened in 1921 as Pine Hills Camp for Boys when local merchant and infrastructure proponent Ed Fletcher leased two acres of land to the YMCA. The name changed in 1929 to honor George Marston, a department store owner and San Diego philanthropist.

Camp Marston initially had just platform tents and a flagpole. Eventually the YMCA used flatbed trucks to move cabins from a dam construction site to the camp and put them on foundations. The camp grew through land swaps and acquisitions plus 10 million in capital improvements over the past 20 years.

A pool and access to Lake Jessop are part of today’s lineup, likewise a 2-year-old dining hall.

Camp Marston’s 10 lodges and other structures now total 300 bed spaces. It operates 340 days per year, including sometimes snowy winter days, in non-pandemic times and gets 16,000 visits over that span, Madeyski said. He estimates that volume to be higher than what YMCA camps get in other parts of Southern California. Girl Scouts and church retreats rent some of the spaces.

The camp has a “bright future” as it continues to preserve a piece of nature and lure students there without their electronics, Madeyski said.