Trailside Discovery Camp

History, Mission, and Stewardship

Established in 1982, Trailside Discovery began as a small camp of 250 students at Alaska Pacific University. The camp is now the largest environmental education and adventure camp in Alaska and is located at the Campbell Creek Science Center in south Anchorage, on 740 acres of pristine wilderness. In the 2004 session, 1700 children, ages 4 -17, slogged through bogs, explored forests, treaded gently across trails, and learned about nature while being immersed in it.

The mission of the camp is to provide a broad range of outdoor environmental education experiences for students of all ages and from all economic, social, and cultural backgrounds. Trailside Discovery offer campers a challenging, fun, and unique program based on the philosophy that the natural environment is an ideal site for community based learning. The Trailside Discovery experience provides children with nature-based opportunities, and assists them in developing the attributes that will later enable them to work alongside others in a non-adversarial and mutually beneficial fashion.

In addition to learning about science and nature, and developing leadership skills, campers also learn about stewardship. Service projects are a key piece of each camp program- in the past two years campers and staff have put in 1,000 hours of work on stewardship projects at the Campbell Creek Science Center, where the camp is housed. Campers have demonstrated that youth like to feel as though they are making a positive impact in their worlds, so campers spend a short part of each day planting tress, engaging in trail maintenance, or working on a stream bed erosion project. Even the youngest campers participate by watering the grounds and picking up litter.

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