Camping and Woodcraft Gear from the Past

A while back I did a post on the Cooking Kit of Horace Kephart. As I indicated there, the kit was manufactured by Abercrombie & Fitch Co. A reader of my blog has managed to find a copy of the Abercrombie & Fitch Co. catalog of 1911. You can see it here.


Specifically, note page 58, where Kephart’s kit is featured. In my original post I had indicated that the kit was made out of tin, as per the description in the museum, but the catalog specifies that most of the parts were made out of aluminum, and the cup and utensils made out of steel. It is interesting to note that Kephart had replaced the steel utensils that came with the kit with wooden ones.

We have to remember that while we read of the adventures of people like Sears and Kephart, these are people who were doing exactly what many of us do these days. They were recreational outdoorsmen, who spend as much time thinking about their gear, and clearly wasting as much money on it as we do.