LESSONS ABOUND AT CAMP

METROPOLIS, Ill. -- The nearly perfect weather conditions on Saturday helped the crowd at the 25th annual Fort Massac Encampment to swell to about 75,000, the biggest single day in the history of the encampment.

With beautiful weather and fall temperatures, "it was wall-to-wall people," said Terry Johnson, Fort Massac site supervisor.

Sunday's rain and cooler weather didn't draw as large a crowd, though many activities continued.

Johnson said the two-day event has grown significantly over the years. Around 100,000 people have attended the encampment each year for the past five years, including about 116,000 last year.

The annual event featured military re-enactors in authentic uniforms, fife and drum units playing authentic music from the period of the American Revolution, and craftsmen and artisans from the period.

Carrie Zabel, one of the drivers for the four shuttle buses, said Saturday the crowds were so large she drove constantly back and forth from the parking lot to the encampment grounds for more than 10 hours straight, picking up a new busload every 10 minutes. As soon as the bus would empty out of one load, it would immediately fill up with another.

The encampment shut down at 7 o'clock Saturday night. She drove her last load to the parking lot an hour later.

"All the parking lots were full," she said, "and people lined up on the highway."

After Saturday's large crowd, organizers expected that last year's record of 116,000 people at the two-day encampment would be shattered. As many as 125,000 visitors were expected to crowd into Metropolis for this year's 25th anniversary encampment.

Then the rains came to town early Sunday morning.

"We're not even going to make 100,000 this year," said Johnson about the crowds.

Because of the rain some of the events had to be canceled Sunday. The colors could not be posted Sunday morning, nor could the Voyageurs arrive in canoes. Musicians who were performing on a stage with microphones and amplifiers had to be canceled as well.

Johnson said the crowds were so large Saturday that most of the food vendors sold out of their Saturday's supply and had to dip into Sunday's inventory. By Sunday, some of the food and craft vendors were closing up shop by early afternoon.

The Zeta Zeta sorority from Metropolis did a brisk business on Saturday, selling smoked turkey legs for $4 a piece. On Sunday afternoon they put out a sign:

"Rain sale -- Turkey legs half price."

Not everyone was upset at the rain. Gil McNichols of Metropolis, who had visited the encampment every year since it began 25 years ago, was glad the rains came.

McNichols said that on Saturday he and his 11-year-old son, Colton, had to wait 35 minutes in a food line. The two returned on Sunday because things were so crowded on Saturday that they could not see everything they wanted to see. The rains were good, McNichols said.

"It thinned the crowds," he said.

But even the rain on Sunday could not dampen the enthusiasm of most of the re-enactors who participated in the encampment.

Members of the 42nd Royal Highlanders huddled beneath a tent, smoking old pipes and swapping stories.

The re-enactment group, which tries to recreate the British army during the period of the American Revolution, boasts about 40 bayonet members nationwide as well as more than 40 women in what they call the "bordelambulant" or movable bordello.

"We also have musicians and a few officers," said Sgt. Major Dave Hamilton of Decatur, Ill. "But we don't really count the officers because they're officers and they don't do anything."

The group was formed shortly before the American bicentennial when many re-enactment groups were forming in honor of the country's 200th birthday. The members of the Royal Highlanders formed to celebrate the British heritage in this country and because they thought the other re-enactors needed someone to play with.

"They needed villains and we're the ones you love to hate," Hamilton said.

Today's re-enactors are named for the actual Royal Highlanders who were at Fort Massac in 1765, prior to the American Revolution.

Usually the group dresses in kilts as their historical predecessors did. But the rains brought a change in plans, so most wore white knickers, the uniform of the day.

"The concept is to allow spectators to approach history from a different perspective, away from the dry books of history," Hamilton said.

"Instead of reading history, we give them a chance to touch it, taste it, feel it, smell it, talk to it," he said.

But, he added, it was not a sacrifice for members of the group, but a lot of fun for the members.

"We are arguably the oldest and maybe the largest re-enactment group in the nation," Hamilton said. "We're certainly the most arrogant."