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Camp Hosting
The best job you've probably never had.
By Jennifer Liebrum
Photos by David N. Seelig

They got there early and they'll be among the last to leave. If they don't hold the best camping spot, it's probably in the top 10. And they will have it all season, for free. Their turf markings are as original as the people who made them.

One site near a popular but less-than-scenic fishing hole is obscured with all manner of swirly things like rainbow wind socks and plastic flowers with bees flailing above them on flimsy wire amid whirling dime-store windmills. Another site, at the edge of a ghost town's cemetery, has a more reverent scene. Here is a sign with the family name burned onto scrap wood and framed with antlers and horseshoes. A freshly filled birdfeeder made from an old plastic bottle hangs from a nearby tree, and a dreamcatcher of multicolored yarn and bird feathers sways over a string hammock.

You can trundle past, looking for a spot for your own outfit, but you won't go unnoticed. Eventually, you'll have to meet the turf barons—you'll have to meet the campground host.

And, usually, what unfolds is comparable to slipping a Benjamin to the concierge at the Ritz Carlton in terms of the where-to-goes, what-to-sees and secret-to-dos of the area. And, you don't have to tip.

"As a rule, people are not doing it for the money," explains Dan Smith, manager of the Yankee Fork Historic Area, headquartered in Challis, about two hours northwest of Sun Valley. "They like doing it because they like people. They pull into a park, learn everything there is to know, live in a beautiful place in its best season, meet interesting people and move on."

Camp hosting, or "workamping" as it has come to be known, has long been a retiree's career heaven. RV groups nationwide pay for gas and keep their social life rich while traveling from site to site each season performing volunteer duties as needed at state and national parks. There is a whole online community to give guidance on how to stretch your dollar between seasons and even a webinar on "RV maintenance for ladies." They have it nailed.

In call-for-service literature from Recreation Resource Management, one of the largest employers of camp hosts in private and public lands in 12 states, the word "work" is in quotations repeatedly, a wink at those who would call what they do "work." Duties can range from "working" in a fee booth to keeping the peace, and anything and everything in between.

Just as the locavore movement has changed the distance between us and our food, the need to get close to our forefathers has caused a surge of interest in the seasonal work from a different sector. Today's camp hosts are more often families, singletons or college kids—anyone with a need for adventure sprinkled with a bit of culture, history and helping out—and, of course, people watching.

But nowhere is the hosting more essential than in areas like the Yankee Fork mining district between Challis and Stanley.

Most people who reach Stanley, 60 miles north of Ketchum, have filled their lungs with mountain air from the Sawtooth and White Cloud mountains, maybe taken a sail around Redfish Lake, and most certainly are looking forward to a milkshake from Smiley Creek Lodge on the way home. In the face of such recreational jewels, it's easy to see how the indifference to our pioneers can happen. But as old-timers die and keepers of history—like Dan Smith—find the holes in the written record caused by unasked questions, there's an urgency to harness a network to capture the lore.

"Personalizing history is the hardest thing I do," Smith admits.

"Fortunately, I've got a great bunch of people who want to see that it happens."

There are one-timers, like the opinionated Texan and the retired fire captain from England who peppered their stories with the accents of their hometowns. And people like Jerome residents Zora Fansler, 69, and her husband Dan, 68, who now serves as the president (she's the treasurer) of the Land of the Yankee Fork Historical Association.

"He worked and lived on the Yankee Fork before we got married, and my dad had a band and played at the Stanley Club for 15 years during the late '50s and '60s, so when I was younger, we spent many weekends on the Yankee Fork," recalls Zora. "We used to be bus drivers in Hagerman and we had summers free. We went up to take in Custer Days and they had a sign on the door that they needed volunteers for the next season."

Thanks to a handful of devoted and animated, volunteers like the Fanslers, more than 20,000 people a year take the turn off state Highway 75 at Sunbeam Village, and follow the signs to Custer and the Yankee Fork Dredge.

They sally forth through what seems like endless miles of rock piles and strip mining detritus to a clearing amid sagebrush-lined ridges and lodgepole pines to a pile of "what used to be" that now are the dilapidated remnants of a former hub.

You're encouraged to visualize that this pastoral expanse of grassland was once a town of 600 named Bonanza City (Spanish for prosperity), the site of the county's first newspaper, The Yankee Fork Herald, a post office, a school, a hotel, a blacksmith shop, a café and dance hall, hardware and variety stores, a croquet field, a baseball field, a small racetrack and a public water system. That life was so rich that inhabitants put in the state's first toll road here, and a stage ride cost travelers $5 to ride eight to nine hours from there to Challis. That was before the second fire in eight years ravaged the town in 1897, forcing most to move two miles upstream to what became Custer City.

It's a lot to ask of your imagination.

And so, to keep visitors from driving on, Custer camp hosts have become expert historians and storytellers. They spend their days absorbing the lore, suited out in period dress and waiting for that intrepid traveler. Guided tours of a select number of restored buildings are on demand, and by suggestion. Either way, they are equally enthusiastically led. Gold panning always yields at least a flake, which visitors get taped on a souvenir card. And cold bottles of sarsaparilla can be bought at the Empire Saloon, now the gift shop, where Zora Fansler is often found. Even if you don't buy a book or a postcard, she'll point you to the box of free rocks to commemorate your stay.

Dan Fansler is frequently the one telling some of the stories you're most likely to repeat, holding court in the old schoolhouse where the visitor hears about the time a gaggle of plucked geese—thought dead—ran naked around town. And about the boy who sledded right in through the school's back door just as the teacher opened it to shout out for him, and the miner who survived a bear attack that left him with just a slit for a mouth that he once had to reopen with his own knife, or starve to death.

You'll find out why to go back to the cemetery in the trees above old Bonanza, where a man who wished to come back as a tree now has a huge one that grew right through where his heart would be. And the man whose cause of death was being "over drunk."

"This program is based on human interaction," Smith says. "We have interpretative panels, but those are just sound bites. A person can take you places that a sign can't take you. If we didn't have people willing to share what they know, that place would be much more of a ghost town, really dead."

And, Smith says, when you hang your hat on tourism, "you have to provide something more than a dusty old book."

Once they've accepted the job, Smith loads staff up with archives and journals, miners logs and photos. He arranges for as much face-to-face with survivors and descendents as are available for interviews, and there are lots of dry runs and practice tour drills. It requires extra dedication to do more than recite history.

"I'm pretty proud of what we're able to do," he says. "And all the partners up here try and make sure we all have a good time."

The nights are usually campfire-side potlucks with spontaneous jam sessions and some off-duty story sharing. The highlight for most is the rehearsal that goes into the annual production of Custer Days with its Old West shootouts and historically inspired activities like goat milking and churning homemade ice cream.

"You get someone like Dan Fansler, and he's got 50 years experience in the Yankee Fork and he just really enjoys himself," Smith says. "A lot of people get trapped into going up there, but once you get there, it sucks you in. It's a different world from where we're all connected."

It sucked in Jamie Whiting, 23, who after seeing an ad in the Challis Messenger and meeting Smith, convinced her sister, Ashley, 18, to join her last summer.

"I wasn't sure what to expect going in," Jamie says. "But after being there I have to say it's one of the most entertaining summer jobs anyone could have."

The pair shared one of the cabins. They headed up the slideshow and tours and helped with the gold panning.

"I learned so much. Idaho is amazing," she says. "For anyone who has been touched by gold fever, it's the perfect place to be."

Smith is optimistic that the lure of gold combined with his compelling staff (paid and volunteer) will keep people coming back for years to come. And he's reluctant to give in to technology and equip the place to be self-guiding.

"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" is his motto.

So, it appears, history will continue to repeat itself as it has all along, by word of mouth and great storytelling.

Custer Days 2010

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