Early nudism uncovered

Exploring the origins of nudism and highlighting William Calhoun Walker's "Pre-nudist Nudism in America"

Opening day at the “first” American nudist camp near Spring Valley, NY, two years before the ALPC established SkyFarm in New Jersey. Photo by Kurt Barthel, June 21st, 1930 | American Sunbather & Nudist Leader, July, 1956

Introduction: The untold history

By

Evan Nicks

Most of the time, when discussing the history of nudism in America, the generally accepted description of the modern movement’s origins features Kurt Barthel, a German immigrant living in New York who, in 1929, established the American League for Physical Culture (ALPC), a group that is widely credited today as the first American nudist club. Indeed, the roots of the modern movement and the 94-year-old American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) are tied, at least tangentially, to this origin story. However, the often-forgotten reality is that nudism in America, as a social and wellness practice, was observed and documented decades before Barthel’s group was formed, and there were other notable early leaders, groups, practitioners, and proponents of what was then widely viewed as a brazen new health fad—figures who inspired Kurt Barthel and many others.

Over a series of upcoming posts, Planet Nude will delve into this nudist prehistory and explore the roots and seeds that grew and propagated into the modern nudism movement but have largely gone untold. We’ll also look at the early nudism movements of other nations, particularly in the East and Middle East, to better understand the global phenomenon as it occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In America, Kurt Barthel has an important place in nudism’s history, but so do others whose efforts and stories were somewhat displaced by the narrative as it was framed by the first prominently distributed U.S. nudist magazine, The Nudist, which was published for decades beginning in 1931.

This historical erasure, intentional or not, might have become evident to William Calhoun Walker, an educator and writer who is known to have established “Common Sense Clubs” which supported social and athletic nudity and had camps across the United States in the 1910s. Walker also produced and edited Common Sense, a magazine that advocated for nudism and included a camp directory as early as 1917.¹

Walker attempted to correct and clarify the record on the pages of The Nudist in December 1934, with an article about his own distinctly American nudist experiences and endeavors, starting with his birth and ending with the untimely demise of what should have been credited as the first American nudist club, and probably would have been, if only “Common Sense” had prevailed.

The Nudist, Dec. 1934 | American Nudist Research Library

Below is William Calhoun Walker’s own written account of this story, titled “Pre-nudist Nudism in America.” This is exactly as it was published in The Nudist, and completely unedited by me save for a few subheads interspersed throughout the text to help with on-screen readability. I hope you enjoy Walker’s engaging narrative as much as I do.

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Pre-nudist Nudism in America²

By William Calhoun Walker

I was born in 1884, perfectly nude. Since then, I have found myself frequently reverting to this state. My parents were of conventional, somewhat austere type, and it was a matter of considerable concern to them that their only child should at times depart from the excellent example which they set. More than once, I was punished for “indecent exposure.”

I remember one time when quite a young boy, I looked into the great bin of oats in my father's barn and suggested to my playmate how nice those oats would feel against our bare bodies. We at once proceeded to the experiment and that night, after a very unpleasant session with my shocked father, I was sent to our neighbor to apologize for leading her little one astray.

After this incident, my boyhood adventures in nudism were mostly confined to my own personal practice alone, but they were not infrequent. I loved the freedom of feeling that came when nothing separated me from the air, sunshine, or water.

In 1905, I was invited to join a family party of people who were planning to camp in the Berkshires. At one time, there were sixteen in the group, but during much of the summer, I was the only grown man, being then twenty-one. We were all readers of Physical Culture magazine, which in those days frankly advocated the practice of nudity. We had also read John R. Coryell’s Child of Love. So we were already inclined to try the virtue of sunbathing.

With some canvas, we fenced off a space in the orchard and the girls took their sunbaths within this enclosure, with the boys on the outside. The one exception to this was in the case of myself and the girl who that summer had consented to become my wife. We took our sunbaths together.

Physical Culture City

Archival image of Physical Culture City, c. 1903 | Source

The following summer we were married and spent our honeymoon in Bernarr MacFadden’s so-called Physical Culture City in Helmetta, New Jersey. A large tract of land, surrounding a seventy-acre artificial lake, had been laid out in streets and avenues, parks and business blocks, and building lots had been sold to readers of the magazine all over the country.

I bought five of these lots. Although the city looked very impressive on paper, it was in a very wild and rough state on the ground. So were the inhabitants of it. There were not many of them, and they lived in crude shacks, but they were the most enthusiastic of MacFadden's followers, and practiced nudity to their hearts' content within the confines of what they confidently believed was one day to be a city of several thousand like-minded enthusiasts.

Nearer the highway and railroad, on the hither side of the little river which ran over the spillway out of Lake Marguerite, were the tents of the summer camp, the gymnasium of the physical culture school, the vegetarian restaurant, the publishing plant, and the playground. Here the people were much more circumspect. The men wore shorts and the women wore bloomers, and only the children wore nothing. But even this was shocking to the public and many buggy-loads of people came from miles away and brought their lunch, for the thrill of being shocked.

Click to enlarge | Archival map of Physical Culture City, c. 1903 | Source

From our vacation at Physical Culture City, my bride and I went immediately to a Holiness Camp Ground, where we found enough seclusion to continue our practice of nude bathing and sunbathing. As I look back now, I wonder whether we should have been put in the stocks or burned at the stake if the elders had found us out.

Summer camp in Maine

We did not find the opportunity for extending our practice beyond our own family circle until 1910, when we started a summer camp for girls on a delightful lake in Maine. We did not introduce nudism there; the custom of discarding clothes arose perfectly spontaneously with the girls themselves; but we did not discourage them and that, I suppose, made us responsible.

About this time a man and his wife from Birmingham, England, came to this country to start a nudist camp, and I spent three days at Ellis Island straightening out their difficulties so that they could get in. An entire nudist family from Bermuda spent the summer with us in 1914, and we returned their visit in 1915. An enthusiastic nudist from Phoenix, Arizona, came all the way to Boston for the purpose of visiting us, though we had known him only through the medium of the little paper of which I was the editor.

In course of time, the fact that we dispensed with clothes part of the time in our Maine camp was found out, and a woman agent for the Maine Society for the Suppression of Vice had me hailed to Portland and was with difficulty constrained from breaking up my camp and taking my guests into the custody of the society for the protection of minor female children! With the aid of a lawyer, we reached a compromise: I must leave the camp, but my wife might carry it on, with the promise that there would be no more “scandalous conduct.”

Incidentally, a rumor of my difficulties was carried by some busybody to the president of the college where I had been an instructor for eleven years, with the result that I was asked to resign.

Denied the privilege of living in my own camp, I went to Missouri and started a new one. This time it was frankly a nudist camp. At first, there were but one other man and myself; later two women joined us, and later still a few others. We were twenty-five miles from the nearest railroad, in an oak forest on the Gasconnade River. In this seclusion we conducted on a small scale exactly the same sort of camp that the modern nudist movement thinks of as being new to this country, although ours was held in 1917, seventeen years ago.

Common Sense Clubs

Two years later, one of these women helped me in establishing a similar camp in the lake region of New Hampshire. At this time our small magazine, already referred to, was advocating nudism among other things, and we organized its readers into a society called the Common Sense Club. Through this magazine, we inspired the starting of five "common sense" camps in various parts of the country.

At our Common Sense Camp No. 1, we had a small lake all to ourselves, and the member who owned the land had built a cottage for us right on its shore. Although we had "waterooms" with double decker built-in bunks, we all preferred to sleep on the large screened porch. The camp started with four men, three women, and two children, but as the summer advanced, a number of others joined us, some for weekends or a fortnight, and some to stay for the rest of the season. Our expenses were low, but we strove to keep the company congenial by inviting only those with whom we were already acquainted or had had considerable correspondence.

Since my associate was a woman with much knowledge of, and more enthusiasm for, the unfired, i.e., uncooked, food diet, and since we had tried it out with considerable success in our Missouri camp, we adopted it here. Some of our guests were rather skeptical at first, but soon found themselves well satisfied with meals which had not been cooked, and there were frequent requests for recipes. Our raw biscuits, or as one man dubbed them "risquits," were particularly the subject of good-natured bantering, but all agreed that they made very tasty substitutes for baked bread.

I do not know whether other Common Sense Camps were nudist, but we had a genuine nudist camp in New Hampshire in 1919. Our neighbors knew of our practice and wondered at it, but remained on no less friendly terms with us. They seemed to assume that what we did on our own land was our own business, and since we appeared to be fairly respectable otherwise, and they profited by our trade, they were content to live their lives and let us live ours.

By the next season, the nationwide membership of the Common Sense Club had grown to about a thousand. Every state in the union was represented and several foreign countries. We published two editions of a directory, whereby members might find other members in their vicinity or correspond with others at a distance. Nudism was not our only common interest, but we endeavored to list those of similar views in religion, politics, diet, and other matters.

My correspondence increased until I was sometimes writing as many as two hundred letters a day. I felt that I was spending too much time and energy on what was only a hobby with me, carried on in addition to my regular vocation. I had to do something about it, and I did.

The end of “Common Sense”

In 1920, I arranged with a young man in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to take over the magazine, the club, and the correspondence. I wrote my last editorial in the form of a swan song, and departed, leaving no forwarding address except that of my substitute and successor. Unfortunately, my successor died shortly after he assumed this responsibility, and the whole movement which I had started, died with him. 🪐

1. These periodicals are extremely rare, as are much of the written history of William Calhoun Walker. If, by happenstance or circumstance, any of our readers have any information or knowledge about existing copies of Common Sense or the Common Sense Directory, I implore you to reach out and let me know.

2. First published in The Nudist, December 1934