Camp Southern Ground 10101 / 14
Camp Southern Ground 101
A few minutes on a real place in Georgia, who it is built for, and what it actually costs the people who go.
Camp Southern Ground is not a program that rents space. It is a property. Zac Brown bought farmland in Fayetteville, Georgia, about 30 miles south of Atlanta, and built a camp on it.
400 acres. That is the whole answer to a lot of questions about this place. It is why a ropes course, a lake, a working farm and a residential lodge can sit on the same site, and why the year splits the way it does: kids in the summer, veterans and their families for the rest of it.
Not a field with cabins on it. Here is what camp has actually put on the land. Open each one.
You have the map and the buildings. Here is a couple of minutes of what actually happens on the 400 acres, filmed by camp.
Camp Southern Ground, “Summer Camp at Camp Southern Ground”
Camp Southern Ground runs one summer camp, for ages 7 to 17, and it is deliberately mixed. That mixing is the design, not a by-product.
The same session. Camp brings together typically developing children, children with neurodevelopmental differences, children from underserved areas, and children from military and veteran families, and puts them through the same week.
It is not left to chance. Camp staffs inclusion specialists, behavioral experts and 24-hour nursing, and says it is one of the first residential programs in the country accredited by the National Inclusion Project.
Camp is also tech-free for the week.
A session is six days, sleepaway. The top tier, which camp says most closely covers the true cost of staff, food, facilities and program, is published at $2,100.
“The experience is always the same. Pick the price that fits your family.”
Camp Southern Ground, rates and dates
The mechanics: you name your tier on the camper application. Tier 2 needs a written statement of need. Tiers 3 and 4 need a statement of need plus last year’s tax return. There is a 10% sibling discount from the second child, and monthly payment plans exist.
The 11 acres are not a side attraction campers visit once. Camp says the farm supplies the food for three chef-prepared meals a day, so the field and the dining hall are the same program.
The menu is gluten-free, allergen-free and anti-inflammatory across the board, so a child with a restriction eats the same meal as everybody else rather than a separate tray. That is the same logic as the cabin mix, applied to lunch.
It also works. Camp’s own published figure: 71% of campers tried a new food in a camp year. For a lot of families with a fussy or sensory-avoidant eater, that number is the whole pitch.
Summer is a handful of weeks. For the rest of the year the same 400 acres does something else entirely.
Participants arrive Friday afternoon and leave Wednesday morning. In between, the week is built around CliftonStrengths coaching and six dimensions of wellbeing. Open each one.
Warrior PATHH is for combat veterans and first responders living with traumatic stress. Camp is blunt that it is training, not treatment, and that it is not a retreat.
90 days. It opens with an intensive in-residence initiation at camp, then runs three more months of structured support, training, accountability and connection from a team of trained combat veterans and first responders.
It is peer-delivered and non-pharmacological, developed by the Boulder Crest Foundation with Dr. Richard Tedeschi and Dr. Bret Moore. No clinical diagnosis is required to apply.
This is the part worth passing to someone. Tick each one as you read it.
Two of the facts in this course only work because somebody else paid for them: a six-day session at $250, and a free Warrior Week. Camp names both when it asks for money.
Camp puts it plainly on its giving page: donations support the Warrior programs at no cost to veterans and their families, and tuition assistance to any child that attends summer camp.
So the tier ladder is not a discount scheme. It is a subsidy, and somebody funds it. That is the whole loop: the price a family names, and the gift that covers the difference.
400 acres, a farm that feeds it, a session a family prices themselves, and a year that hands the place to veterans once the kids go home.
Camp Southern Ground → Veteran programs: get startedFinished the course? Claim your course points with the code.
Enter code campsg101f8q →Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255. Confidential, 24/7, for veterans, service members and their families, whether or not you are enrolled in VA care. Chat at veteranscrisisline.net.
Anyone else in the US can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline the same way, by calling or texting 988. Nothing in this course is clinical advice, and Camp Southern Ground’s programs are training rather than treatment.
