For nearly half a century, kids have spent their summers away from screens, exploring some tucked-away woods in southern Johnson County instead. Now, 48 summers later, that era quietly and abruptly came to an end.
Via email, day camp Outdoor Education Laboratory recently announced the end of its final summer. The decision has left many former campers and parents to mourn the place where they first fostered an understanding and appreciation of the natural world.
The closure was announced in mid-August
The email that went out to camp families on Aug. 15, obtained by the Post, thanked families for their longtime support.
The email called the decision to close “difficult”, but did not give an explicit reason for the closure. Phone calls and email inquiries to the camp itself were not immediately returned.
“We are incredibly grateful for the trust you have placed in us over the years and for allowing us to be a part of your children’s summers,” the email said. “Thank you for being such a special part of our community and history.”
Outdoor Education Laboratory ran for 48 summers
According to Outdoor Education Laboratory’s website, the camp was originally launched by a group of local teachers who wanted to give students more opportunities to get outdoors.
OEL offered weekly activities for students within the Shawnee Mission School District, Blue Valley School District, Olathe School District, and other parts of the southern Kansas City area. Kids between kindergarten and sixth grade were eligible to attend.
The activities ranged across a wide variety, from fishing and aquatics to yard games and photography.
OEL had two different campsites: Sycamore Springs off 183rd Street and State Line Road, and Red Cedar, off 183rd Street and Metcalf Avenue.
Campers and families are sad to see it go
Among the dedicated circle of camp families (the ones who made a point to sit and refresh the website the second that enrollment opened for each summer), the closure was a surprise — an emotional one.
“It was confusion, and honestly, grief,” said former camper Nancy Holcroft Benson. “It just felt like you lost a friend.”
In the 1980s, she spent many summers at OEL, glimpsing animals like raccoons or skunks during morning hikes and wading through the creek to catch crawdads. Today, she’s been a professor of Organismal Biology at Johnson County Community College for 23 years — a trajectory that she credits, in part, to her time outdoors at the camp.
“It was a different time then,” she said. “The whole idea was kids are outside all day long, learning about nature.”
It’s an appreciation she passed down, too. Her own children, Diana and Henry Holcroft Benson have spent six summers at OEL.
The twins have their own fond memories; feeding pieces of hot dogs to the beloved snapping turtle in the camp’s pond, holding snakes and turtles, tie-dyeing their camp T-shirts, sitting around giant campfires.
Now seventh graders, Diana and Henry were hoping to become “grubs” (basically counselors-in-training) next summer. Zeke Mason, also now a seventh grader, was planning to do the same next summer.
“Being in the suburbs, they don’t really get a lot of just outside runaround time,” said his mother, Mandy Mason. “It was a really great opportunity for them to actually get out into the woods and see animals and get to kind of run around in a safe environment and experience nature in a way that they don’t normally get to.”
Lauren Scholtes, also a mother to former camper Cate Scholtes, said her own daughter formed an appreciation for nature at OEL.
Though Cate, now 12, had just wrapped up her final summer at OEL, she spent several years bonding with her friends over their experiences there.
“I was grateful that she had the years that she had,” Scholtes said. “She loved the animals it had, and she loved handling the snakes, and just the freedom that she had to explore.”
Whatever comes of the two campsites in the future, Holcroft Benson said she hopes they remain nature-focused and accessible; somewhere where people can still explore.
“It was a special place for everybody who went,” Holcroft Benson said. “A lot of people have connections to it.”
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