Small Steps

Small Steps Camp Green Lake

Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility is the juvenile facility to which Theodore was sentenced after the altercation at the movie theater. Camp Green Lake first appears in the book Holes, the prequel to Small Steps.

Camp Green Lake is located in the middle of the desert in an unspecified location in Texas. This desert is in an abandoned town that used to have the largest lake in Texas, but it dried up after Sam the Onion Man, an African American sweet onion merchant who fell in love with a white school teacher, was killed 110 years earlier.

Camp Green Lake is run by a woman named Warden Walker. Each day the young men dig five-foot deep holes to "build character". After Stanley (the protagonist in Holes) and his friend Zero are released from camp, it rains for the first time in 100 years. The owners of the camp are arrested and the camp becomes a Girl Scout Camp.

Green Lake is a real lake in Texas—it's the largest natural fresh-water lake in Calhoun County, Texas, and covers an acre of land. Historically, the lake received its water through the overflow from the Guadalupe River. When it is completely full it's four feet deep; however, the lake sometimes dries up during times of drought.