Earl and Pauline Humes knew that they wanted to start an inclusive children’s camp for campers of all ages, races, religions, and backgrounds to receive an equitable camping experience. They were greatly influenced by their own Quaker values as well as what they had just witnessed in WWII with the blatant discrimination against peoples of different creeds and colors.

As soon as the War ended they set out in search of a property to build their dream upon. When they got the call that the Gardiner-Doing Camp property on Upper St. Regis Lake was for sale, they rushed to view the property. And promptly fell in love.

They signed the papers within the week and as they were doing so were confronted with the realization that they had not thought of a name for their camp. So without much fanfare, they decided on the spot on the name Camp Regis, for the lake it was on.

The first summer at Camp Regis was in 1946 and was as accepting and diverse as the Humes’ could have wished for. You can read more about the first few years of Camp Regis in our blog post written by Pauline Humes entitled: “The Way It Was.” Where she goes into detail about how the community reacted to the first black counselor, and how they had a countess in the same bunk as a concentration camp survivor.

The demand for Camp Regis was rising every year and Pauline and Earl Humes realized that they needed to expand this summer camp experience for teenagers as well. So they set off in search of a property to house their new teen camp. In 1956 they found and purchased Applejack Farm which was a few miles from Camp Regis, and created Applejack Teen Camp. The teen camp had the same moral principle as Camp Regis but provided more opportunities for the teenagers to give back to the community, grow as adults, and really test their wilderness skills with longer and more intense camping trips.

Soon after the creation of Applejack Teen Camp the Humes’ realized the difficulty of running two programs on separate properties. And so they merged the two camps onto their original property on Upper St. Regis Lake, intending to also merge the names into simply Camp Regis. But the campers of Applejack Teen Camp were not having it. They camp to camp the next year with banners stating their pride at being Applejack campers, as noted in this article written by one of the Head Administrators in 1995 entitled: “The Applejack Teen Camp Experience.” And so Earl and Pauline Humes renamed their children’s and teen’s summer camp into being Camp Regis Applejack.