Arizona's Approved Tourist's Camps Banish Roadside Health Risks

WE HAD made a big jump, had been driving hard all day, and the children were little cats they were so tired. The man at the wheel turned to me and said thoughtfully: “My camping outfit fills half my garage and most of the cellar and is the result of twenty years of careful selection-but it can stay there, I never expect to load it up again. Do you see what I see down the road? Well, that's why!” In a few moments we read on a placard “APPROVED TOURIST CAMP, ARIZONA BOARD OF HEALTH,” and turned off the highway up a cinder trail into a neatly-spaced group of cottages, each with its doorstep swept clean, with dainty curtains at the windows and a homey little chimney sticking up through the roof. In half an hour the children, with their tummies full of wholesome food, were asleep in clean, safe beds; the dishes were washed and back in the cupboard; and, from the car under the shed just outside, we had brought in our magazines and our pinochle deck and had settled down in comfortable camp chairs around a white table under a hundred candlepower gasoline lantern swung from a rafter. An evening of solid comfort and a good night's rest were ahead of us.

We might stay a month, we might stay only a night; no difference, all the necessities for safe, carefree camping were at hand; our car was not swathed in canvas and guyed to the ground, with washpans and stewkettles all over the radiator; instead, it was free from all camp duty and ready, on a moment's notice, for side trips; and, with plenty of good rest every night, there was a growing enthusiasm all the way down the family for the pleasures of the woods.

That bitter wail of recent years as to what has become of the American family has the laugh from those who get out on the road and travel with the crowd. They are out of doors playing together. According to Frank E. Brimmer, writing in the American Motorist, 44,000,000 of them were during the vacation season of 1928; two-thirds in Tourist's Camps by the side of the road. These staggering figures, entailing unprecedented conditions, make each phase of the motorized vacation industry a subject of national importance and call the best minds of the country into play to solve the problems as they arise. And it is beginning to be possible not only to get dependable opinions and estimates but accurate facts and figures on many points which were all guess work a few years ago.

The whole history of civilization has proven that the public is a big baby and must be protected by the forward think ing members of its own body, and this still holds good throughout the millions of gasoline nomads of today. So, in Arizona, as well as in most other progressive parts of the United States, roadside health risks are receiving ever-increasing consideration. The Arizona Automobile Association, in line with the policy of the American Automobile As sociation, of which it is a part, is placing in front rank among the services it renders its members in the safeguard ing of the traveller's health.

Health, considered from the Tourist Camp standpoint, depends upon three things; namely, pure water (and food), thorough and complete rest between laps; and safe, sanitary surroundings. As far back as 1925 the A.A.A. began an exhaustive study of conditions affecting these matters all over the United States and since that time has been working steadily through its branches to raise all standards. It was also in 1925 that the Arizona State Board of Health began inspecting all camps in the state where guests were received for pay, the work being done at that time and continuing to be done by Miss Jane Rider, State Sanitary Engineer, with headquarters in the State Laboratory at the University in Tucson. Approval cards are issued to camp operators where conditions justify, and all information regarding approved camps is given its members by the Arizona Automobile Association.

Looking at it from the viewpoint of the motorist it is beyond question that health is one of the real essentials to the happy automobile trip but, looking at it as a business proposition, it is the very life of the whole motorized tourist industry of the future. So, whether the more heedless element of the public demands scrupulous protection or not, states wishing to become popular with the tourists, and organizations honestly wishing to serve their members are working as never before to bring roadside health conditions up to a safe-asyour-own-home standard.

It was many years before motor touring became the national pastime that medical and sociological men agreed upon the necessity for rigid regulation and supervision of all agencies that served the public with bed and board. Regulations were adopted in every state and in every municipality establishing standards by which the hotel man and the restauranteur must abide. These frestrictions were deemed vitally essential to the public health and at that time entirely covered the ground.

But those were the days when only the men went camping; when little clumps of them would get together months ahead and spend a whole lot of time and quite a plenty of money arguing out and assembling camping outfits; which, in due season were laboriously packed into regions of mystery and solitude, usually with the principal object of destroying as much wild life as possible. And those were the days when Daddy's vacation meant separation from his family all the rest of the year his business kept him preoccupied and more or less absent; but now, when the time came to relax and play, the separation was complete. Of course he was in no way to blame. After he got all his duffle packed ready for the start he could hardly get aboard himself, much less the family. And besides, they would neither have been comfortable nor, in many cases, safe. All concerned agreed that it was the only way.

Even after the automobiles came in countless hordes and the highways were built to accommodate them, roadside camping in tents with only your own equipment to depend on, left vacationing en famille still more or less laborious, and as it increased, brought about many serious health risks. In those days only the hardiest or perhaps the hardest-up-set out blithely to enjoy the outof-doors by the side of the road; and many of these came home with typhoid fever The others either continued to stay at home, stop at hotels, or take to their solemn rest on the front porch of some old fashioned summer resort.

And then came the tourist camp, only tents at first, next flimsy shacks; and now deluxe cottages that resemble artistic little homes set all over the face of the earth in the nicest camping places. Again quoting Mr. Brimmer, “The modern 'out-door hotel' camp, as some have been called, made itself felt as a factor in the summer tourist business for the first time during 1926.” But its growth since then has been like a tidal wave; vacation time now means that the whole family takes the road as a unit.

And it means more than this: it means that the health problems that have been met and solved in the best homes must be just as safely and conscientiously dealt with in the tourist camp. The better class of motorist is demanding a higher and higher standard and is refusing to patronize unsightly and unsanitary places. This is the attitude of mind which the Arizona Automobile Association is encouraging, not only for the safety of its members but to build up Arizona's tourist traffic on a justifiable confidence in regard to health protection. After a careful study this organization has established the fact that this state stands with the best in the Union in the standard held up for its approved tourist camps. Any motorist patronizing a camp displaying the approval placerd of the Arizona State Board of Health may feel safe that the following regulations have been complied with: Section 1. Camps shall be located on well drained sites, susceptible to quick drying following rains. Preferably the soil texture shall be porous sand or clay.

Section 2. Camp sites shall be of ample size to prevent overcrowding and conditions not conducive to good health and morals. There shall be not more than thirty cars or camping parties parked per acre of ground.

Section 3. At least one caretaker shall be employed by the management to visit each camp or picnic ground every day on which campers or picnickers occupy these grounds. The caretaker shall do whatever may be necessary to keep the ground and the equipment in a clean, sanitary condition.

Section 4. An adequate supply of water shall be provided from a source and in a manner approved by the State Board of Health. Municipal supplies shall be used where available. Dipping from open wells will not be permitted.

Section 5. Camps shall be provided with a system of sewage or waste disposal approved by the State Board of Health. Connections shall be made to municipal sewage systems where available.

Section 6. All garbage and rubbish shall be deposited in metal cans with tight covers. These shall be emptied daily and contents disposed of in a manner approved by the State Board of Health. City scavenger service shall be used where available.

Section 7. Copies of these regulations shall be posted conspicuously in each camp.

Section 8. Failure to comply with the foregoing regulations shall be deemed sufficient cause for declaring the premises a public nuisance under the premQuestions asked by the more thoughtful members of the touring multitude show that Arizona, as a state, comes under a certain degree of added suspic"How are the water holes ahead?" they'll ask with only a half laugh. As a matter of fact only a part of Arizona is what we call desert country and even in this part of the state wherever water is found at all its quantity is the only matter of difference, not its quality Upstairs, anywhere in Arizona, the water is like all mountain water, plentiful, cold, and especially delightful. It is true that the water supply has always been of first concern in the development of this state but it is a safe conclusion to say that when the minds of a people are particularly occupied with any one feature of their living conditions all matters pertaining to that point receive especial consideration. No approved tourist camps in Arizona are to be found where the water is either uncertain or of inferior quality.

Now, the other point upon which questions are asked with noticeable frequency is a bit more complicated but the answer is just as definite and reassuring.

"How about the lungers that go to Arizona in droves? Do I dare to take my family into the Arizona tourist camps when the roads all the way across the continent are full of them coming here to stay?"

Stop a minute and analyze the question. It is true that people suffering from tuberculosis come to Arizona in very large numbers from all parts of the United States; they come on trains and sleep in Pullman berths and stop at hotels en route and when they arrive in Arizona go immediately to sanitariums or sunshine health camps; and they come by automobile, stopping along the way in whatever accommodation they prefer, but when they get here they are no longer looking for tourist camp hospitality. They go immediately to health camps or to sanitoriums. Furthermore if guests are accepted in Arizona's approved tourist camps who are in any stage of this dread disease the same properties in the atmosphere which make this a mecca for such sufferers also diminish the danger of infection under out-of-doors tourist camp conditions.

A great proportion of the better tourist camps of the state ask all applicants for accommodation if there are any who are sick in the party. This sometimes avoids any possible danger but it is well known that unless a sufferer from tuberculosis is obviously ill he and his family will cast the truth aside and deny everything. So our greater feeling of safety here is not from the fact that Arizona tourist camps of the better class try to exclude the sick from their lists of patrons but from the fact that in this state the sick themselves are less interested in trying to patronize them than anywhere else in the country. When sufferers from tuberculosis arrive at their destination they had much rather go immediately to the sunshine health camps which are so preeminently successful in restoring their patients and which offer such superior living conditions. The same cleansing sunshine and the same pure atmosphere which makes Arizona the healthseeker's objective lessen all roadside health risks within the state and make the work of the Arizona State Board of Health more certainly effective. It is an hardy germ that can withstand Arizona's roadside sunshine many hours and add to that the constant pressure of all the other agencies for safeguarding the traveling public in the matters of health in the state and the desired feeling of confidence begins to grow. The Arizona Automobile Association intends to continue to urge its members to demand the highest standards in living conditions in the camps which they patronize with the hope that immediately Arizona will lead the world in banishing all roadside health risks.