By Kathy Arlt, Contributing Writer @Blogfinger
Want to spend your summer in an Ocean Grove tent? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but unless you spent last summer in an Ocean Grove tent, you probably won’t be in one this summer. The 114 tents that remain on the two Camp Meeting tent grounds by the Great Auditorium have long waiting lists of people hoping for the chance to become an Ocean Grove tenter.
Ah, but if only you could travel back in time to 1887, you would have had a much better chance. There were more than 400 Camp Meeting tents then—in twice as many campgrounds—not to mention several hundred tents put up by outside contractors on many Ocean Grove lots. Here are two Ocean Grove Record advertisements for commercial tent rental companies:
But you’d need more than just a tent to get through your summer. How about a bed to put inside the tent? And a chair or two, and maybe a table, and somewhere to wash up? With all the hotel dining rooms and cafeterias in town, you might not need a kitchen, but what if you wanted one of those, too?
In that case, a Camp Meeting Association tent was what you’d go for, because you could rent not just a tent, but almost every other accouterment you’d need or want. Here’s an 1878 CMA price list:
Portable kitchens were introduced in 1877, and came in two sizes: 7×8 feet at a rental price of $7.00 for the season, or 8×10 feet at a rental price of $10.00 for the season. The first season kitchens were offered demand was so great the CMA ran out of them. But the 1878 price list declared that “enough kitchens have now been provided” to make one available for every tenter that desired one.
Other factors also influenced tent prices. There was a $5.00 surcharge for tents in the front circle at the Great Auditorium, and a $3.00 surcharge for tents on Pilgrim or Lake Pathways. A series of discounts were applied if the tent was rented for longer than six weeks, eight weeks, ten weeks, or for the whole twelve-week season. In some years, tent rental prices during Camp Meeting Weeks were increased. In fact, during the earliest years of Ocean Grove’s history, charts listing all the surcharges and discounts that applied to tent rentals were so complicated you’d need a calculator to figure them out.
But of course the calculator hadn’t been invented yet….
Next time: Pictures—I promise—of tents on the north and south ends of town