Volunteers hope to restore Camp Parsons in Watertown, site of many memories for north Minneapolis children
WATERTOWN, Minn. — As summer camp season comes to an end, the hope is one local camp's story is just beginning.
WCCO went west of the metro to Watertown, where there's a place known as the "magical Camp Parsons."
Stephanie Young-Simmons is a Camp Parsons alum.
"You wait all winter long for it to come alive and then you'd pull up off the highway to the gate and then you unlock the gate and it was just like entering a whole nother world," Young-Simmons said.
Kitt Young-Dickerson is also a Camp Parsons alum.
"I was out here all of my childhood, every summer, learning to fish and camp and make fires," Young-Dickerson said.
Autumn Frazier-Cotton is another alum.
"Learning to swim here, even though — lots of leeches back then," Frazier-Cotton said.
In 1956, Katherine Parsons gifted it to the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center so kids who lived in the city could experience the country.
The campground was abandoned in the '90s, but the bonds and the memories live on.
"When I saw all of the stars in the skies, I literally screamed because I had never seen that many stars in the skies before. It was overwhelming, the emotion that I was feeling," Kimberly Caprini said.
And now there's an effort to help more kids make memories. Volunteers are fundraising to restore its glory.
Laura Danielson is helping lead the restoration effort.
"IT belongs to the community and that's so critical to me. And it's essential that we bring it back," Danielson said. "This time we are gonna do it."
"I just want kids, especially from the north side, to be able to experience this and be a kid," Frazier-Cotton said.
There is a summer day camp running in the city but the hope is to get it back out to Watertown.
It will cost about $5 million dollars to restore the place. If you'd like to help or learn more, there's a Camp Katharine Parsons Restoration Project website.