Local author Jeff Turner knew about Camp Dewey long before he decided to write a book about it.

As a kid growing up in Quaker Hill, Turner would walk along the railroad tracks for fun, occasionally walking towards the Thames River near a sprawling plot of land in Uncasville that would now never be mistaken for a place where hundreds of teenagers once learned artillery drills, went on long marches and raced boats up and down the river.

But after writing two novels in his retirement, Turner was mulling the subject of his next book when the image of the riverside camp, and the characters that could be built around it, appeared in his head.

“It was perfect for a setting like this,” he said in his Waterford home last week. “All along, it had been hiding in plain sight.”

Wealthy New York financiers established the camp in 1916, as WWI ramped up and they foresaw a need for young people trained in military skills and ready to join the war effort.

“So they dressed them up in sailor outfits and gave them real guns,” Turner said. “They even had a cannon they shot off.”

The junior naval reserve camp, named Camp Dewey for former Adm. George Dewey, had no formal connection to the U.S. Navy, but for several summers it drew hundreds of teenagers seeking adventure, recreation and training that could prepare them to fight for the United States in the global war erupting around them.

Turner’s book “Lost Boys of River Camp,” released in February, invents characters around the teenage boys, the camp leaders and local people they met at Camp Dewey.

Some of the real Camp Dewey cadets joined the Navy and Merchant Marines as they turned 18 and WWI raged on, though Turner said he doesn’t know how many of the boys became soldiers.

Camp Dewey existed past the end of WW1, until 1919, when it was shut down amid disagreements about funding and how the camp should be run, Turner said.

Based on a handful of primary sources Turner found at the New York Public Library and photos collected at the National Archives, he says he has created a historically accurate fictional world of a year in the life of a 15-year-old cadet at the camp.

Records of activities of the camp are few and far between. The former camp property on Point Breeze Road is the site of a private home with electrical wires running overhead. The area hasn’t been mined for historical material since the camp closed.

Turner said his book is the first compilation of research about Camp Dewey, and he sees the project as a way to revive local interest in the camp and its campers as a crucial chapter in regional history.

“Every town and every village up and down the Thames lays claim to some part of history,” he said. “This piece of Uncasville history got lost. What I’ve tried to do is give them a voice.”

m.shanahan@theday.com