Rustic, Remote, and Quite Comfortable – Striking a Balance for Outdoor School Students at OMSI’s Hancock Field Station
Hancock Field Station, the camp owned and operated by Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), is located in North-Central Oregon and hosts Outdoor School for students across the state. It’s an extraordinary camp experience, as students learn and play in one of the coolest, most stunning landscapes in Oregon.
“We have a pretty unique situation here,” says Janet O’Hara, Hancock Field Station Manager. “OMSI has ten acres in the middle of 2,000 acres of a national monument. We are an island of private land, inside public land.”
That national monument is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, located in the John Day River basin in Wheeler and Grant counties. Hancock Field Station, or Camp Hancock, is specifically located in the Clarno Unit of the park, where hiking trails edge the towering Palisades, a landform of cliffs and rock formations that preserve fossils from over 40 million years ago. Flora and fauna are abundant throughout the park, which has 80 different types of soil. A long list of birds and animals call the place home, including American kestrels, great-horned owls, coyotes, lizards, and Pacific tree frogs.
It’s also a place that is extremely remote, with no cell service and limited wifi. It gets very cold at night and hot during the day. Around 2,500 – 3,000 4th-8th grade students from over 20 Oregon counties visit throughout the year, and the immersive experience can be a shock. To ensure that they feel welcome and have what they need, camp maintenance projects are an ongoing commitment at Camp Hancock and support accessibility on a few levels, making sure that infrastructure is safe and amenities are inclusive to a variety of students’ needs.
“We are ensuring that in the long run, this place is still here, and that it is accessible for every single person,” says O’Hara, referring to projects like a 2017 project, funded in part by GFF, that replaced the cedar shake roofs with metal ones to help protect the buildings in the event of a nearby wildfire. “Then there are projects we’ve taken on with specific audiences in mind, whether they are in a wheelchair, they have a condition that they need privacy, or that they are gender diverse.”
The North Restroom renovation was one such project. Camp Hancock consulted with disability equity and inclusion consulting firm Empowering Access in Bend, and theTransActive Gender Project, a Portland-based social services organization, to determine the need for the project and how best to be responsive and accessible to people with disabilities and gender-expansive youth. The North Restroom now includes accessible, private, gender-neutral spaces, and doors, which replaced curtains. A 2022 GFF grant supported infrastructure improvements and electrical updates, which brought the camp up to code and enabled the full renovation. A 2023 GFF grant is supporting the installation of heaters and floors that enhance the user experience and better accommodate staff needs.
O’Hara can’t emphasize enough the impact the cabin conditions and camp amenities have on the overall experience. The food, the bathrooms, the beds, and excitement at chicken nuggets being served rank high among student-reported highlights, even when outdoor school activities and locations are new and thrilling. O’Hara says these things are important because they help create the best situation from which students will learn.
“We are going to expose them to new things,” O’Hara says of the landscape, the fossils and creatures, and stargazing at night. “But if they are not comfortable they are not going to learn. It’s part of a holistic experience,” says O’Hara. “Then we can really deliver on the education once folks are comfortable.”
Education includes field studies, hikes, and focus groups on a range of topics, from paleontology, fossils, and geology. Students search for leaf, plant, and animal fossils just outside the camp. They watch lizards, insects and spiders. “Scorpions blow everyone’s minds,” says O’Hara. Additionally, students learn about food waste, as the educators weigh food thrown out at the end of meals.
Camp Hancock began in 1951 as a few tents circled together and tucked in the fold of a rocky valley. Fourteen campers visited that year. Today, it is equipped with modern cabins, hot and cold running water, plumbing, a cafeteria and full kitchen, and now an all-gender restroom. Camp Hancock’s goal of providing a fun and inclusive environment for all students to learn continues to advance with each project, allowing students to comfortably experience rustic accommodations while accessing the wonder and mystery of Oregon’s prehistoric past and natural beauty.
