Archives West Finding Aid

Camp Waldport, or Civilian Public Service (CPS) Camp No. 56, was one of three conscientious objector camps in Oregon during WWII. Home to the Fine Arts Group, it was established in 1942 and administered by the Civilian Public Service of the Mennonite Central Committee (most of the CPS camps were run by the "historic peace churches": Mennonite, Brethren, and Quaker). The main work of the Camp Waldport interns was the reforestation of Blodgett Peak Burn, a forest that had been heavily logged during the first World War and that had suffered devastating wildfires after the war. The work was often dangerous; five men died during the three years the camp was in operation (compared with a total of nineteen deaths throughout the entire camp system). Of all the camps in the system, Waldport was the only one located within the coastal zone blackout.

Among Camp Waldport's interns were several poets and artists who are widely considered to have contributed to the Beat Movement and the "San Francisco Renaissance" of the 1950s and 60s. Celebrated "campers" include Adrian Wilson, author of The Design of Books; Kermit Sheets, founder of the theater group Interplayers; painter Morris Graves; and poets William Everson and Glen Coffield. The camp's official newsletter was The Tide, but the interns founded their own press, the Untide Press, which published volumes of poetry by Glen Coffield, William Everson, Kenneth Patchen, Bill Shank, and Jacob Sloan. The Untide's first book was Everson's X War Elegies (additional material about the Untide Press resides in Special Collections Manuscripts, SFM 105). The Illiterati, a periodical published out of the Cascade Locks CPS camp, published and supported the work of the Fine Arts Group at Waldport, along with the writing of Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, Henry Miller, and others.