In 1908, city kids didn't have many opportunities to escape Pittsburgh's stultifying summer heat and throat-choking pollution. Many of them were new arrivals to America living in crowded conditions, suffering from asthma and malnutrition.

That summer, the countryside became accessible when a group of social reformers in the Jewish community founded the Emma Farm Association, a health-and-wellness facility in Harmarville.

Children, and sometimes their parents, would travel by train into the great outdoors and spend a few weeks breathing clean air, bulking up on nutritious food, hiking, swimming, playing sports and enjoying nature.

One of the nation's earliest "fresh-air" camps, Emma Farm and the Laurel Y, operated by the Young Men & Women’s Hebrew Association (who merged with the Irene Kaufmann Center to form the JCC) were the precursor of today's Emma Kaufmann Camp, or EKC, operated by the Jewish Community Center of Pittsburgh and located on Cheat Lake near Morgantown, W.Va.

Along the way the camp moved to Harmony, Butler County, and absorbed children from two other primarily Jewish camps -- the Laurel Y in SomersetCounty, which closed in 1961, and Camp Lynnwood, a 200-acre campus that the JCC bought in 1972 to serve as EKC's new home.

Camp Lynnwood, originally a rustic YMCA camp with lanterns and outhouses, was purchased by four Jewish families from Pittsburgh who installed electricity, hot showers, flush toilets and a swimming pool. Since taking over the property, EKC has continued to update the facilities.