I went to a 2-week overnight Girl Scout camp 3 different summers when I was in the scouts and the camp had a good sized creek (not a river though) that ran through it.
Many of these "comprehensive" camps do this because they offer some type of "boating" activity (we had rowboats but there was also canoeing available at the camp too and I think those activities were part of earning a badge). I expect some camps also offer kayaking as well and high-end ones might have sculling.
But what happened to that camp was that it got hit bad with flooding when Hurricane Agnes came through the area in '72 (the camp is in Eastern PA not far from Philly) and flooded the entire site -
When I had returned there, I saw the damage - a rope bridge completely upended and many trees downed in the woods where the creek ran.
When the weather "behaves", the water is serene. But in this era of climate change and more extreme weather events, all bets are off. They often dubbed stuff like this a "once in a century" event but they are unfortunately now happening far more frequently. 
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