Fire strikes camp site again

Suspicious blaze is 2nd in 7 months at Balls Creek

Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

BANDYS --Some of the oldest wooden tents at the Balls Creek Campground burned to the ground in a suspicious blaze earlier this month, leaving nothing but charred rubble and memories.

It was the second time in seven months that fire damaged the secluded Methodist campground and left some of the wooden tents, many more than 100 years old, damaged or destroyed.

Authorities say the fires are suspicious and are looking into a few suspects they think could be connected to both fires, said Maj. Coy Reid of the Catawba County Sheriff's Office.

Those who love the annual Balls Creek Camp Meeting say the fires are tragic and have wiped out years of history.

"I can't believe there would be a human being that mean," said Cheryl Wilson, who has been attending the camp meetings for 30 years. "I just can't understand why anyone would want to destroy this."

But Wilson, 59, and other owners of the generations-old tents -- primitive, wooden cabins built in long rows -- say they won't let the fire's destruction stop a 154-year-old Catawba County tradition, and plan to rebuild in time for the next gathering in August 2008.

Every August since 1853, thousands of people have descended upon the Balls Creek grounds for "camp meeting" -- a two-week religious event where families live in the dilapidated wooden tents, attend church services and catch up with relatives and friends they rarely see.

The meetings were started in 1797 by traveling minister Daniel Asbury, in Terrell. The camps were first held under the arbors of trees, and eventually moved underneath canvas tents. Years later, when campers built the wooden cabins, the term "tent" followed.

But the traditional timber structures, some of which have wood shavings covering the floor, make the tents more vulnerable, said Catawba County Fire Marshal David Pruitt.

"It was all wood," Pruitt said, "and there was nothing burning expect for that wood."

The Sept. 14 fire, Pruitt said, damaged more than a dozen tents and destroyed at least six.

Investigators have determined that the blaze, which took firefighters six hours to extinguish, started in a center tent and spread to the buildings on either side, Pruitt said. They are still trying to determine how it was sparked or who may have ignited it.

"We won't call it arson because I don't have anything to prove it was arson," Pruitt said. "But it's a very secluded location, and it'd be very easy to come out there and do something."

More than 300 tents create a labyrinth along the narrow dirt and gravel roads and lead toward the campground's center, where campers gather beneath a man-made arbor for services and music.

Some of the tents destroyed recently were the campground's oldest and had survived a 1956 blaze that burned 130 tents to the ground.

Wilson's tent, which has been in her husband's family for generations, was built in 1857, she said.
"There were timbers in there from the original," she said. "We were using the original kitchen table and bench. That stuff can't be replaced."

Her neighbor, 82-year-old Rachel Gabriel Carter, has been going to camp meetings since the 1920s. She met her husband there after he returned from World War II, and her daughter met her husband there years later.

Both her family's tent and the tent that belongs to her husband's family were destroyed earlier this month, leaving behind nothing more than scorched furniture and memories. But her family rebuilt before, when the 1956 fire damaged their tent, and Carter said she plans on doing it again.

"There's a lot of memories," she said. "We all get together every year and have a family dinner on both Sundays during the meeting. It's something that's been going on as long as I can remember. I have to rebuild."


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