How to help rebuild Wes Camp

By Ellen Petrick, Whiskeytown Environmental School Community Board Member

Whiskeytown Environmental School (WES), located within Whiskeytown National Recreation Area at the base of Shasta Bally and at the confluence of Clear Creek and Paige Boulder Creek, has served Kindergarten through 6th grade students for over fifty years. The camp was deeded to the National Park Service in 1969, and the school was launched in 1970, eventually providing overnight programs, day-long field trips, and summer camps. WES has served over 140,000 youth to date through a partnership between the National Park Service and the Shasta County Office of Education. The school is a member of the California Outdoor School Association, and is a certified Residential Outdoor Science School.

Since 2011, Whiskeytown Environmental School Community (WES Community) has existed as an official nonprofit, established to support science education at Whiskeytown Environmental School by raising donations and community awareness. The destruction wrought by the Carr Fire in 2018 caused immediate closure of the school. While day programs have since been reinstated, extensive damage to structures and infrastructure caused by fire and post-fire rains have prevented the return of students for overnight programs.

Following the fire, the pandemic left many children grasping for connection with each other and the outdoors. These events propelled WES Community into a new role. In 2021, the nonprofit was approved as an official philanthropic partner of the National Park Service. WES Community is committed to building the campus back stronger, to serve the community for the next 100 years.

The Grow Back Stronger campaign aims to return children to the beloved week-long residential camp that has become a right-of-passage for fifth and sixth grade students across a nine-county region. WES Community believes that all children should have the opportunity to experience growth and transformation through place-based science education while hiking, stargazing, and exploring Whiskeytown’s creeks. WES Community invites you into this shared vision to bring children back to WES, back into the outdoors, and back into relationship with nature and each other.

Thanks to the generosity of numerous businesses, civic groups, foundations, and individuals, WES Community raised over 4 million dollars in 2023. As the campaign now approaches its public phase, your help is needed! Please join the effort to return children to WES. To explore how you can help, and to see the latest plans for student housing, teacher housing, a safety and administration building, and an improved amphitheater, please visit rebuilding plans, or email wescommunityinfo@gmail.com, or call WES Community President Melinda Kashuba, 530-440-5584.