This article was taken from ASA Days - Nudist Clubhouse Group:
Alois S. Knapp emigrated from his native Austria with wife Ursula during the turbulent times between the two world wars. Settling in Chicago, Alois established his law practices whilst Ursula kept house. The Knapps assimilated swiftly to their new American life, save one important interest: their love of Freikörperkultur.
The couple, yearning for a place to enjoy the summers naturally, found the perfect stretch of Indiana farmland in 1933 west of Roselawn. Together with five guests, they established Club Zoro in Newton County on the south side of State Road just 17 kilometres from the Illinois line.
The renamed Zoro Nature Park grew in popularity after WWII ended as returning servicemen — fresh with their more worldly attitudes towards nudity — brought their brides and children to try this new type of social fraternity. Alois was also editor for the first bona fide American nudist publication, Ilsley Boone’s Sunshine and Health, in which he incorporated many photographs from Zoro to promote the club. Many of said images included Barbara Knapp, Ursula and Alois’ niece who immigrated after the war and became their hānai daughter. She was an accomplished ice skater, pilot and also managed the park’s office. Nudity was in Barbara’s blood: her favourite pastime was photography, both as the photographer as well as modeling. Her contributions from behind or in front of the camera appeared in many of the ASA journals.
By the late 1950s, Zoro Nature Park had become one of the premier clubs in the United States, sporting among other amenities its own landing strip. Alois was recognized as one of the elder statesmen in the National Nudist Council. He even appeared on the TV programme, “What's My Line” in 1958, where he stumped the panel guessing his occupation. The Knapps also owned a restaurant in Whiting, across the state line from Chicago, known for its excellent fish dinners.
After becoming the largest sun club in the nation, the Knapps decided it was time to sell and retire. Unbeknownst to them, the change of ownership would be to the detriment of social nudism and their beloved Zoro Nature Park would become Naked City. Dale and Mary Drost were the new proprietors and son Dick the “brains” behind such low-brow stunts as the annual Ms Nude Teeny Bopper Contest for pre-teen and adolescent girls, the St Patrick’s Day Erin Go Bra-less dance, and the most notorious Nudes-a-Poppin’ smut-fest, which has since moved to neighbouring Ponderosa Sun Club (Naked City closed when Dick was exiled from Indiana on child molestation charges)
To-day, Alois and Ursula are gone; Barbara quietly slipped into the annals of nudist history; Zoro’s beautiful timber-lined lake was “destroyed” after bulldozers fell all the trees to reformed the shore into a heart shaped quagmire; and the club, after spending nearly a decade of closure following Drost’s abomination, has reopened as Sun Aura. Roselawn itself — still a quiet farming centre — is known more for the two naked enterprises (neither of which are affiliated with AANR) and the crash site of American Eagle № 4184 in a field five kilometres south of the old property. Everyone in this country who loves the clothes-free life owes a bit of gratitude to Alois Knapp, the Father of American Nudism.
SOURCE: nudistclubhouse.com
