Page SO/Country Living. Otis Nudist Colony Was One Of Nation's First. Young
fellows after work would sometimes jump in a truck and drive over and hike ...
Page SO/Country Living
Otis Nudist Colony Was One Of Nation's First DIED: Henty S. Huntington, 99, a Presbyterian minister who pioneered organized nudism; in Philadelphia, Feb. 16. Intrigued by the nudist movement in Europe, Huntington joined the American League for Physical Culture in 1929 and established one of the first U.S. nudist camps, in Otis, Mass. In 1938, pr~claiming himself a humanist and agnostic, he renounced his ministry. -Newsweek, March 2, 1981 OTIS - Only a handful of Otis residents remember firsthand the, nudisLcamp that..gaye.. the town a place in history and made it the butt of jokes for many years. "Otis Wood Lands is there today," said Clifford Clark. "It's on Beech Plain Road, off Route 8, at the end of the village. The camp was up on a hill, with lots of sunshine and woods. Everybody kept out of sight.'" The Rev. Henry S. Huntington of Scarsdale, N.Y., became intrigued with the concept of social nudism, its advocacy of healthy outdoor life, good food, pleasant companionship and recreation all in the nude. He purchased a parcel of land in Otis and Sandisfield in late 1933 from Fred Preston, according to Registry of Deeds records. He and his school teach~.r wife invited friends to visit and enjoy the Berkshire outdoors in the buff. They established an organization called Burgoyne Trail Associates. The nudists stayed at the old mred- farmhouse ,0000000-property" recalkdAndy. Morandi-ofHillsdale, N.Y., who in those days ran the Otis Hotel. He remembered having seen various club members while running his beagles in the area. "They had tennis courts and you'd often see them walking there from the house," he said. "I don't think there were ever more than a dozen or 15 people there. " Visitors to the colony often traded - with their clothes on at Humason's Store. Charles Humason, who ran the business for 37 years before retiring recently, recalled they were all pleasant people.
"I don't know what brought them to Otis," he said. "He and his wife were very nice. They came first, then the others on weekends. There never were big crowds." Townspeople, surprised at first, took the nudists in stride, said Mr. Humason, who was a selectman at the time. There was never any question of permits for -the-placec -for--OIIe' thiqg,-th;e:camp pi'opef-was "actually over the border in Sandisfield. "It wasn't thought too much of by most," he said. "It was all posted, you weren't supposed to go in there. They weren't bothered, there were no troubles." "I was working at the store at the time," said Thelma Humason, town librarian and Charlie's sister-in-law. "When we delivered groceries there, we had to call first and we had to ring a big bell at the entrance." While most residents respected the nudists, there were reports of encounters with the sun worshippers.
Young fellows after work would sometimes jump in a truck and drive over and hike through the woods to see what they could see, recalled William Tacy of Lee. "They'd be out there bare, playing tennis or volleyball or swimming in the pool," he said. One July 4th the group, looking for a little sport, let off some fireworks near the camp, just to see how high the nudists would jump. Mr. Humason said his cousin Edward and an uncle were trout fishing on the brook which ran through the camp one day. They w.e.r.e.near...a small bridge.nverl.h.e.-_ stream, part of a hiking trail. "Then they heard voices and they hid under the bridge," he said. "It was Doc Huntington and his wife and four or five others coming down through the woods naked. They walked right over the bridge, but the boys didn't get caught." Looking at things from another perspective, 'one mother and daughter still living in South Berkshire were among the nudists at Burgoyne Trail. "I went there first when I was 9 years old," said the daughter. "My father was a psychiatrist, my mother a psychologist. They went there for seminars while us kids ran around outdoors. We went there until I was about 12. My older sisters didn't like it, and they dropped out after a while. "I remember vividly one of the best times I had there, it was one day we went berrying - blueberries, not raspberries," she added. 'J.Nudismisi'antaSizatasbetug
sexy but once you were there it wasn't," she said. "And we all dressed for dinner,. There were certain manners." ' After only a few years, the Huntingtons lost interest in the camp. Most of the property was sold in 1936 and '37. The grounds, including a Revolutionary War-era house, eventually became part of Camp Sequena, a summer facility operated by the Connecticut Trails Council of the Girl Scouts of America. In 1972, the 345-acre property with a new man-made lake was bought for the vacation home development called Otis Wood Lands.
