Music teacher Dorothy Harlow Marden of Waterville and other educators formed an organization that purchased 190 acres on Lake Messalonskee in Sidney for a summer music camp. They provided intense music experiences to young people from the Eastern United States from 1931 to 1934, until the camp went bankrupt during the Great Depression.

The Eastern Music Camp averaged 110 co-ed campers and 20 faculty specializing in diverse instruments from voice and chorus to bassoon for eight weeks in the summer. They held annual concerts, drawing crowds of campers’ families and the public.