Outing Reservation
The Outing Reservation, ninety acres of land and a thirty-acre pond in Greenville, R. I., was purchased with funds given by the Class of 1906 at its twenty-fifth reunion in 1931. The plan for such a wooded retreat for members of the university community had been conceived by Clinton C. White ’00, President of the Brown Club of Rhode Island, and Professor W. H. Kenerson 1896. With the help of Vice-President Albert D. Mead and geology professor Charles W. Brown ’00, a site was chosen, and Dr. Emery Porter ’06 initiated the idea of the class gift. The reservation and the main lodge, also the gift of the Class of 1906 were dedicated to the memory of its first class president, Florence John Harrington Price ’06, who was killed in action at Vimy Ridge, May 30, 1916. Along with the plaque of dedication, there was another plaque in the lodge, containing a poem by Eliot G. Parkhurst ’06, which reads:
During 1931-32 a second cabin, a gift of the Class of 1907, was built, and the Botany Department conducted a reforestation project, planting 2,000 young pines, and labelled a number of different trees. The 1907 Cabin was destroyed by fire in 1954 and rebuilt in 1955. There were two other buildings, the boathouse built with funds raised by the classes of 1914, 1927, and 1932, and the “Cabana.” All four of these buildings were made available during the summers to members of the Brown community at extremely low weekly rentals. Through the years the Outing Reservation was used in all seasons for camping, boating, and fishing, and in the fall for informal gatherings of small groups of freshmen with upperclassmen and faculty members, but in time students made less recreational use of the reservation and operation of the distant facility became a problem. In May 1963 a Brown student who fell from a boat was drowned. The University reluctantly put the property up for sale, and it was purchased in December 1965 by the YMCA, which had previously leased the property for use as a summer day camp. With part of the proceeds from the sale was established the Class of 1906 recreation fund, which was later used for recreational facilities at the Mount Hope Grant.Here are things not made by hands,
The clean wind, the clear sky,
Gray mist on green lands,
The owl’s hoot, the loon’s cry,
Falling waters, dancing light,
Full moon on a frosty night,
White drifts, whirled high,
These, the gifts not made by men,
The things which do not die,
Men must die but here will be
Life and immortality.