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Located at the western edge of the village is the assembly ground which was previously governed by the Appleton District Campmeeting
Association. For ten (10) days every summer it had been the rendezvous for the approximately 60 evangelical congregations
of the Appleton district. The grove of nearly 7 acres with its 70x100' tabernacle, surrounded by dormitories and cottages,
attracts the attention of tourists who pass the place on highways 10 and 57. For 50 weeks of the year the place was unoccupied
but filled with hundreds of visitors annually over the last two Sundays in August. Originally a part of a fairly heavy tract
of woodland on the farm of Henry Ott, from whom the site was at first annually rented.
Like in some other denominations, camp meetings were a prominent part of the activities of the Evangelical Church. Early
camp meetings, as primitive as the lives of the early settlers, had the leafy canopy of the trees of the forest overhead with
rough planks laid over falled logs for seats and with torches of burning pine knots or bonfires for illumination at night.
By the middle of the 1890's, the Forest Junction congregation belonged to a Fond du Lac district group possessing a collection
of tents, which were shipped from place to place on the district where congregations undertook to sponsor a camp meeting.
In 1906, two years after the establishment of the Appleton district, the Forest Junction congregation organized an association
of its own. The organizational meeting was held in the church in the evening of May 3, 1906. It was attended by about 50
members, with the Rev. G. Fritsche, then presiding elder of the district as chairman, and J.C. Hawker, a local layman, as
secretary. Articles of organization were set up for "The Forest Junction Circuit Camp Meeting Association" and
a board of seven directors was elected consisting of John Otto, secretary; John Seybold, treasurer; Manrow Schubring, Henry
Ott, and John Huebner. The board was authorized to purchase some tents, the Henry Ott grove was selected as a camp site,
and by the end of June that year a camp meeting was in progress and has been held annually at at the same place ever since.
The end of June was retained as the date for the annual event until in 1920, when a small-pox epidemic in this area made
it necessary to postpone the meetings until the latter part of August which was date has been unchanged up to 1943.
With the enlargement of the assembly, the tent of 1906 was becoming too small to accomodate the growing number of worshippers
and in 1924 the present tabernacle was constructed and dedicated by Bishop S.P. Spreng of Naperville, IL who was the guest
speaker for the gathering that year.
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