The Cashiers Historical Society has launched “Campfires & the Embers of Youth: The History of Summer Camps in Western North Carolina,” a digital exhibition that opened in March 2026. This immersive online experience uses a bold and engaging design to bring the history of summer camps in western North Carolina to life for global audiences, breaking down physical barriers to local history exhibitions.
In June 2025, the Cashiers Historical Society opened the exhibit “Campfires & the Embers of Youth: The History of Summer Camps in Western North Carolina” on its campus. The exhibit examined the impact of residential summer camps on the region’s history and culture. Although western North Carolina has the highest concentration of summer camps in the Southeast, no scholarly book, article or exhibit had previously explored that history.
The exhibit was the first to bring individual camps together to create a regional history of the camp movement in the Southeast. Curators visited 10 camps for primary-source research, pulling historical materials out of attics and into a 32-panel exhibit. Topics included the history of summer camps, the impact of social movements on camps, camp traditions and the effects of camps on the region.
The original physical exhibit closed in October 2025. During its run, CHS saw its highest visitation in recent history. Due to the exhibit’s popularity and research, CHS created the digital version to ensure the history is available to the public. The online version explores the people, ideas and events that shaped summer camps in western North Carolina.
“It was an enjoyable challenge to explore adapting this exhibit into a digital format,” said Lindsay Garner Hostetler, the exhibit’s curator. “Reimagining how to move an online audience through the information and imagery is a different process than the original exhibition we first designed. This digital version is engaging and interactive, and highlights pieces of audio and video clips throughout the exhibit’s thematic sections in ways we could not achieve in a physical exhibit. I’m excited for people who enjoyed ‘Campfires & the Embers of Youth’ to return to the exhibit in a new way; and I’m thrilled that this digital site will open up this local history to an all new audience.”
The exhibit is available at embersofyouth.com.
- Staff Reports