History

In the late 1940s, Dr. S. M. Baker had a dream of creating a camp and conference center while fishing on at Blue Lake. In a few short years the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church made the first steps in making this dream a reality and in 1951 the first camps were held on the grounds of Blue Lake. These early campers slept in tents and cooked their food in an outdoor kitchen. One year later, in 1952, the first building was built at Blue Lake and with the following year seeing the addition of the first cabins, creating Pinewood, the first permanent campsite at Blue Lake that could sleep 132 people.