Camping with Kate Cate

By: Fiona Pan '27

In Curtis Cate’s autobiography, School Days In California, a chapter was omitted from his manuscript. This chapter encapsulated what Mrs. Cate, formerly known as Katherin Thayer Russell, meant to Mr. Cate and this school, as her love for the outdoors influenced the spirit at Cate. In the chapter titled “Camping With Kate Cate,” he discusses his wife's love for the outdoors as she often took trips with her friends and explored the wild. Not only was she an enthusiast of the outdoors, but she was also integral in the formation of the school. She was the first woman to serve on Cate’s Board of Trustees. Through her love for the outdoors and Cate School, Kate Cate planted a seed for the later success of this school as it sits in the rolling hills of Carpinteria, surrounded by the great outdoors. 

At the beginning of the chapter, Mr. Cate describes Kate Cate’s expeditions in the California backcountry. Where she was often fascinated by numerous flowers and plants; specifically, he mentions a journal Kate kept in a 1922 expedition to the Mojave desert, writing, “a small herbarium of pressed specimens with their Latin names written in ink by one of the Girls and locations and some common names noted by Kate Cate's pencil, still preserves, in faded colors…” (5). She used this journal as a way to document the places she explored, often undeveloped areas. In the summer of 1923, on a fishing trip to Oregon, Mr. and Mrs. Duanes accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Cate up the South Fork of the Mackenzie to Crater Lake, where they chose to part ways. When the Duanes took the train home, the Cates met up with Charlie Voorhies, an alumnus from the class of 1919, who drove up from his home in Medford and offered them a place to stay. The next day, they traveled into Madras, “the dreariest town in central Oregon” (7). There, they camped at one of the hotels. Kate often ventured solo on her camping trips, but on this one, she took Curtis with her. On their journey back to Carpinteria, they made a pit stop at Tahoe Tavern, an uppity lodge where “[Their] camping clothes lacked luster in the great halls; bejeweled dowagers surveyed the dusty travelers…raised their eyebrows, while the management looked down its nose at the intruders” (7). The clothes at the tavern were snooty, yet the moon was shining on the lake, and all was well, whether or not their camping attire stood out. Two days later, they returned to Carpinteria. The following year, a 1924 edition of El Batidor revealed an exciting new headline: Kate Thayer Russel had married Curtis W. Cate.

After their trip in 1923, they began running regular trips with the boys, visiting locations like Santa Cruz island and the Mojave Desert and an attempted storm toward San Simeon. This began the closely intertwined relationship between Cate students and the outdoors. Ultimately, Katherine Cate’s love for nature propelled the transition into connecting students with the outdoors. This begs the question: why was this chapter omitted from Curtis Cate’s manuscript? 

Every year in the fall, Cate students spend a week in the California wilderness for the beloved outings week tradition. Without ever knowing it, these trips are the flowers that blossomed from the seeds Katherine Cate planted 100 years ago.