In June, 1960, while I was District Consultant for the Pacific Southwest District of the Pacific Coast Unitarian Council, at the close of PSWIRL week at Camp Radford, a delegation from PSWIRL came to see me and said that the PSWIRL Annual Meeting had voted to ask me, as District Consultant, to explore the possibility of purchasing a summer conference site. Camp Radford, where we had been conferencing, had proved inadequate to accommodate all the various summer conference needs we were experiencing. We already had moved the LRY activities into a separate camp, of which I had been "Dean" in 1956 and 1957.

In July, 1960, a Camp Committee was formed. With the help of several lay persons, Ide Keeler, and I canvassed several locations in the area. A camp in Idyllwild was for sale, and a private piece of property capable of development at Seven Oaks was available. Ide Keeler heard that the Boy Scout camp near Barton Flats, Camp Arataba, a leasehold on Forest Service land, was for sale. Arataba's lodge had recently burned down and, at just that time, someone had given the Boy Scout Council a large tract of land in the San Bernardino Mountains on the ridge near Lake Arrowhead. So the Boy Scout Council put their leasehold for sale. On July 29, Keeler and I met at the camp to look it over. I had Bert Shaw, an engineer with the City of Riverside, and a member of my congregation, give us professional counsel. It was a beautiful site on the north slope of Mt. San Gorgonio at an elevation of 6800 feet. The camp had been a tent camp with "permanent" wooden tent platforms, perhaps 16'X16', on which army-style tents were erected each summer. The tent platforms were arranged in groups of six or eight, in perhaps six or eight places scattered over a considerably larger area than that which now comprises de Benneville Pines. Each of the tent clusters had a large washbasin, perhaps 4 feet by 10 feet, with water spigots. The water was brought to each site in pipes laid on the surface of the ground. These pipes had to be turned off and drained before winter. There was a horizontal well with water flowing under its own pressure into a storage reservoir made of concrete pipes cemented together and sealed. The water was excellent and sufficient to serve the camp. In addition to the tent platforms and well, the camp improvements consisted of a standard camp-size swimming pool with propane heating system, a new shower facility, the remains of the burned lodge (slab and fireplace), and the infirmary, now de Benneville's Director's cabin. There was also a fire-circle (the present one just east of Homet Lodge), and an Inspiration Point where "Chapel" services were held, now barely discernible on the promontory over-looking the present water tank.