Children in coal towns like Helen found many activities throughout the year, including movies at the town theatre, baseball in the spring, and marbles played in rings scratched into the dirt. As the Great Depression affected the area, a Fayette County social worker and an employee of the Koppers Coal Company discussed their wish for miners' children to have the same mind- and body-building activities available to other schoolchildren. The idea of a camp emerged, and two years later, in 1935, it became a reality. For the next five years, Koppers Coal rented the Fayette County 4-H Camp, where employees' children spent their summers. After the camp's success, the company purchased 83 acres along the Greenbrier River in Summers County, and in 1941 Camp Thomas E. Lightfoot welcomed its first campers. For the next 43 years, children from Koppers Coal camps, later Eastern Associated Coal, including those from Helen, spent their summers enjoying crafts, nature study, swimming, boating, canoeing, riflery, archery, and other sports.