ERBC Through the Decades: the 1970s
A view of Echo Ranch in the mid-1970s. You can see Allen McMurchie’s original log cabin on the left next to the newly constructed Ranch House.
One of the most famous parts of Echo Ranch’s origin story is how a pulp mill tried, to no avail, to buy the Allen McMurchie’s homestead that would eventually be signed over to Avant Ministries and become Echo Ranch Bible Camp. But even though we’re all thankful that Allen didn’t sell, the truth is that Echo Ranch wouldn’t be what it is today if that pulp mill hadn’t sought out the land. You might recall that prior to the 70s, the road in Juneau didn’t go very far north. Everything and everyone that came into camp had to be boated in from Tee Harbor. But as that pulp mill banked on establishing operations somewhere in Berners Bay, they began construction on the road, working from both ends to extend the road all the way to Echo Cove. In the end they didn’t get what they were hoping for, but Echo Ranch got a much faster and more reliable way to get to and from Juneau.
Thanks to the new road and the increased influx of people and supplies it allowed, the early 70s saw huge growth for camp in every area. The horse herd started to multiply. More volunteers from around the country flew to Alaska to work at Echo Ranch. A generator, purchased by donations from all over, was brought up on the barge, although they only ran it a few hours each day to save money on fuel. Camps were held almost every week of the summer, and camper numbers went up every year; by 1974, there were more kids who wanted to come to camp than Echo Ranch had beds, so each cabin had campers sleeping on the floor. A fundraising campaign was quickly accomplished for new camper cabins, and throughout the rest of the decade they started to pop up around camp, constructed by volunteer work teams.
Each summer camp back then lasted a full seven days; when the counselors hiked their kids around the cove at the end of one week, they picked up the next batch of kids, and the next week of camp began with no break. Of course, the pace of camp back then was a bit more relaxed than it is today. Campers spent most of their time making up their own fun, as well as enjoying camp’s equipment for softball, volleyball, and tetherball. One memorable activity, though, was a sort of progenitor to camp’s modern-day Kangaroo Court (in which a random counselor convicted of making mischief is brought to “justice” through a shenanigan-filled tribunal): a volunteer constructed a device upon which each of the accused had to take turns resting their chins and turn a knob, culminating in – after an unknown number of turns – the release of a pie catapulted into the victim’s face.
The Kangaroo Court pie catapult. Classic camp fun.
Although they were hands-off when it came to running the summer camp program, Allen and Catherine McMurchie continued to live on the Echo Ranch property into the 70s. In 1973, the other staff decided Allen and Catherine should have a real house to live in rather than their little log cabin, and a prefabricated ranch house was ordered and brought up on the barge. Thanks to the labor of many volunteers, the exterior of the house went up in a matter of weeks, and everything on the inside – drywall, electrical, plumbing – was worked on over the following winter. But when the house went up, Allen took a look at it and had one thing to say: “It’s too big.” The modest lumberjack who had spent the last few decades in a two-room cabin couldn’t imagine living in such a comparatively lavish building. The McMurchies never moved in.
Allen’s decision ended up not mattering, because in 1974, the McMurchies, who had long dreamed of getting involved in overseas missions, were presented with an offer from Wycliffe Bible Translators to go to Colombia for a two-year trip, where Catherine would help in the local Wycliffe office and Allen would set up a sawmill and teach the local people how to run it. The McMurchies accepted, and ended up staying for three years. (They never ended up spending any more substantial time at Echo Ranch; at the end of their time in Colombia, Allen was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, prompting the McMurchies to retire in the southwest U.S. Allen died in 1979, and Catherine lived in California until her death in 1999, just a month shy of her 100th birthday.)
That brings us up to 1975, when, just one week before the start of summer camp, tragedy struck. In the old building that served as camp’s kitchen, dining hall, and staff housing, a kerosene refrigerator ignited a stack of wood, producing a fire that quickly raged out of control. Although everyone made it out of the building safely, everything inside was destroyed.
The remnants of the old kitchen and dining hall after the 1975 fire.
While the camp staff reeled from the disaster and the loss of their possessions, an urgent question was unavoidable: what to do about summer camp? No one wanted to cancel, but camp can’t happen without a dining hall... That’s when the camp director, Don Callison, got an idea. The McMurchies were in Colombia, and the brand-new house built for them – which had a full kitchen and a spacious dining/living room – sat vacant. Why not convert it into a “dining hall”?
In a flurry of preparations over the next week, countless friends of camp and local businesses came out of the woodwork to help supply what was needed to quickly outfit the new Ranch House to serve as a dining hall for summer 1975. Benches were built, additional appliances were bought, and people all over Juneau donated money to fund the renovation. In a week’s time, the first campers of 1975 arrived right on schedule, and shared their first meal in the brand-new “dining hall.” Summer camp went on unimpeded.
The Ranch House would continue to serve as camp’s dining hall for the next few summers, feeding as many as 500 campers in 1978. But plans were shortly drawn up for a new, larger dining hall, and construction began as soon as possible. It was a long process, often with frustrating steps, over the next few years, but in spring 1979, the McMurchie Lodge was finally completed, and christened with an open house that brought in dozens of guests from town. For nearly 50 years now, it’s remained in many ways the heart of camp, bringing every person in camp together under one roof to share a meal three times a day.
(Above: various photos of the McMurchie Lodge, aka the Dining Hall, construction process in the late 1970s. Click on any image to see it bigger.)
The story of the old dining hall fire is a prime example of how God has preserved Echo Ranch through the years, even bringing new growth out of tragedy and loss. Don Callison was actually told, when plans were drawn up for the existing Dining Hall, that he was crazy to build it so big - how could they ever need so much space? And yet today, we’re regularly maxing out the space in the Dining Hall, wishing a little bit that Don had built it bigger! With the Lord continuing to sustain us and provide for us as He has, we’re sure that He’ll once again use whatever new growth we reach next to bless not only us but generations to come.