Raccoon River Retreat was a clothing-optional campground adventure

I’m coming out of left field for this, but the story is too good not to write about. Since it’s the month of November, we often read about Thanksgiving, family and traditions. I am going to be tradition and family adjacent with a long-forgotten, all-male camping/party spot called “Racoon River Retreat” that used to be located near Adel. Personally, I can’t say I ever indulged in a clothing-optional campground adventure, although a few of the nudie cutie/nudist camp films by Doris Wishman cycled through my VCR. That might sound a little dirty, but I can assure, by today’s standards, movies like “Hideout in the Sun” (1960), “Nude on the Moon” (1961) and “Diary of a Nudist” (1961) are the safest racy films you could catch your kids watching.

Rev. Harold Wells of Des Moines was the director of the Wesley Foundation and campus minister for Drake University, one of the six founders of the Lesbian Gay Democrats, and founder of the Thoreau Center in 1979. He was politically active in his day. He received the Dorothy L. Towne Award for outstanding service from the Iowa Council for International Understanding in 2004. He helped organize the Urban-Religious Coalition of Greater Des Moines and the Des Moines Lesbian/Gay Resource Center. He also opened a gay men’s campground called the Racoon River Retreat. It was advertised in the old ACCESSline, which was Iowa’s only statewide LGBT newspaper, so it wasn’t a secret if you knew where to look.

To get there, you took I-80 west and would get off at the De Soto exit. Then, you would head north about a mile on a gravel road heading toward the Raccoon River. The property had a parking lot, a campground for RVs and tents, plus a cabin that was used as a clubhouse/commons area that had a kitchen and living room area. The cabin sat on top of a short cliff that was 15 feet away from the river. The property was about 100 acres in size and was tucked away from the main road and surrounded by woods.

“The house was rough. People didn’t live there, but some folks would be there all summer long,” Bryan “Stinky” Smith, co-owner of the Blazing Saddle, said. “I took someone out there once on a tour of the place. They had a do-it-yourself-built sauna that kind of looked like an old wooden outhouse. People would be hanging out on the water or just out in the yard. It was kind of like a frat house where clothing was optional.” 

Smith said people who were coming in from out of town and wanted to know about the place would call the bar and ask questions.

No one got permits, and everything was built by hand, so you can imagine how things were not up to code. It’s amazing what you could get away with on private property in rural America when people would mind their own business. On occasions, the campground would have potlucks, bands would perform, and they threw one hell of a Fourth of July celebration. The cabin would be open from May until December.

Harold Wells passed away in 2013, and the property went up for sale.

It’s all fun and games when we talk about the party camp, but Rev. Wells did a lot for this community. He spoke loudly before it was safe to do so. The retreat itself was just another one of those things he wanted to do for the gay community.

The spirit of Racoon River Retreat does live on with other campgrounds around the state including the LV Campground in Coggon, Iowa, which carries on the men-only tradition, but there is a nudist campground for everyone in Oxford Junction in Jones County, as well as The Elms in Greene County. One last note is that, as far I know, there isn’t a clothing-optional campground near the Des Moines Metro. ♦

Kristian Day is a filmmaker and writer based in Des Moines. He also hosts the syndicated Iowa Basement Tapes radio program on 98.9 FM KFMG. Instagram: @kristianday | Twitter: @kristianmday