Historical Misconceptions and Program Level Confusion

[Sentinel947]

The admin building and maintenance should be the only buildings at a scout camp. Everything else detracts from the intent of camp. Stosh

So where do you send 300 or so campers during severe weather?

[King Ding Dong]

So where do you send 300 or so campers during severe weather?

Spread out and crouched down most likely. What do you do with 10 scouts on a hike when severe weather hits? Are you proposing tornado proof shelters for 300+ campers? That is extremely expensive and would put the cost of camp out of reach for most scouts. I have been to LSSR outside Sioux City IA and the devistatiin from the 08 tornado was extensive. So they are fundraising for shelters for that one camp and ignoring all the other camps in the area to satisfy all the worried moms. To Stoshes list I would add a health lodge and commissary with refrigeration for patrol cooking as it becomes difficult to live off the land when a camp has a couple thousand attendees in a season.

[Stosh]

So where do you send 300 or so campers during severe weather?

 

Ditto on what KDD said, with the hundreds of thousands going through Philmont, BWCA and Sea Base each year, I seriously doubt whether they have enough storm shelters for everyone.

 

Health Lodge could be a room in the Admin Building and Commissary in one end of the Maintenance Building.

 

Because of it's logistics, the Admin, Health, Commissary and Maintenance could be all put into one big Admin Barn for that matter.

 

I also seem to remember that the deaths that occurred at Sioux City, were the result of the large fireplace in the mess hall falling on the boys. A large mess hall with open expansive roof would be the last place I would want to be in a storm anyway. I'll take my chances in a ditch over that any day.

 

Stosh

[Sidney Porter]

I understand the love for patrol cooking but I don't know if that is reasonable to do away with the dinning halls. We should not forget the cub resident programs that also use these facilites (I am of the belief that the cub members dues pay for a lot of the camps that they are not able to use this would cut out even more of the camps).

 

If the packs were responsible to cook that is going to fall on the leaders (for wolfs and bears - not allowed to cook outdoors), even a Webelos 1 is going to need a lot of supervision. It would cause an increase of parents needing to come and be more like family camping and lose the effectiveness of the independance that resident camping should provide.

[TAHAWK]

"My" troop from 1983-1987 and the troop I joined thereafter for twenty-five years did it's own cooking, and the Scouts wanted it no other way. They liked the meals that they planned and cooked. Cooking quickly morphed into one of the biggest features of camp for them - Iron Chef Thursday. Invited staff favorites loved it.

 

Having said that, the Battle of the Dining Hall was lost fifty years ago. My council's training center was turned into a poorly-laid-out dining hall by unmistakable customer demand - as in "No Dining Hall," we're going somewhere else."

 

The camp just attended did have about 100 Scouts cooking that week. Some untis are, thankfully, incorrigible. We were cooking there in 2010.

[Stosh]

Some camps have divided their areas into Cub and Boy Scouts. More facilities for the Cubs obviously. But they did not share anything other than camp staff, maintenance and admin areas. The camp I just went to also does the same thing as well as another camp in the area that I have attended in the past.

 

Our Council camp just put in a new dining hall a few years back and are still "working" on it. Really wasn't anything wrong with the old dining hall, just not as glamorous as the new one. However, with the drop in campers since then, they are now going to offer campsite patrol cooking for the first time in many years as "something new". Now there's a marketing strategy. Put up the big bucks for a new mess hall and then go back to patrol cooking because no one showed up to oooh and ahhhh the new dining hall.

 

It's kind of a nice camp, but they're always a day late and a dollar short with everything they do. They put in a nice training center with flushies, showers, kitchen, classrooms, fireplace and no place to sleep. In the winter they throw out mattresses on the floor for winter camping.

 

The horses are gone, that used to be a big draw for the boys. Waterfront has been replaced with a rather small pool. 30 years ago it was still a nice camp. Our boys no longer want to go there and it's only a 30 minute drive to get there.

 

And one last comment.... The Webelos cross-over boys said that with all the Cub day camps there, they were bored with it and they wanted to go someplace different now that they were in Boy Scouts. So for the less venturous units they can put in 5 years of Cubs and 7 years of Boys all in the same camp! Now that will really sell on the troop level where 3 years in a row is boring enough.

 

Stosh

[NJCubScouter]

The camp that my troop usually goes to for summer camp has a science building, and a few other buildings that go beyond Stosh's list. But it is not really up to any of us to decide what facilities "should be" at someone else's camp. If you want to go to a camp with two buildings, go to a camp with two buildings. Others may wish to go to a different camp.

[Rick_in_CA]

The admin building and maintenance should be the only buildings at a scout camp.

 

Everything else detracts from the intent of camp.

 

Stosh

 

To Stoshes list I would add a health lodge and commissary with refrigeration for patrol cooking as it becomes difficult to live off the land when a camp has a couple thousand attendees in a season.

 

How about storage sheds for the archery and rifle range equipment, canoes and boats (life jackets, etc.) and other camp supplies (need paper for that orienteering class? You have to store it somewhere)? A cabin for the Camp Ranger (unless you expect him to live in a tent all year)? Sanitary facilities (you can't expect all the campers that come through each year to use catholes)? Perhaps an outdoor amphitheater for presentations, skits and other group events (you could always use a meadow, but after several hundred scouts use if over any period of time, it's a patch of dirt/mud, not a meadow)?

 

Hey, this looks like most scout camps. The only thing not in the above list that most have is a dinning hall.

[skeptic]

Back to the misconception issue. Early camps predominately had camp cooks and some kind of mass feeding. But until the post WWII period, they also seldom had troop attendance per se, but rather individuals going, then grouped in some manner for activities. Some units did go with a group, but it was not necessary. Patrol and/or unit cooking came into general use after the war, but many camps still had group eating, or both. Now, in much of the country west of the Rockies there are fire restrictions with which to deal, so camps have had to add group dining in case they lost the in site cooking ability. That then has led to some simply going to the dining hall, as fewer and fewer wanted to deal with patrol cooking, or it was cancelled too often with fire issues. It also has limited locations to build any fires at all. We were not even allowed gas stoves in camp, though lanterns were okay. Another issue now to be dealt with is the health department. Food storage and sanitation issues related to site cooking also can be a stumbling block today. The last couple of camps we attended with patrol cooking available, or sometimes part of at least one or two meals, the distribution of food and such was another challenge.

 

If your unit cooks in its normal program consistently, missing the summer camp week is not really that much of problem. But, if all the hurdles are overcome, and it is available, it should be seriously considered by the scouts.

 

But the dining hall or other mass feeding has its own issues. If the camp gets a rep of poor food, it can kill its attendance for years, even if they fix the problem. That goes for any program area too. Our local camp is already hampered by size to some extent, but the drought dried up the reservoir two summers ago, and the lack of boating hurt us this year especially. Last year, it occurred too late to lose campers, as it went dry in mid June. But we knew it was not coming back this summer. Hopefully we will see the forecast El Nino happen and we will have a small pond at least next summer.

[Stosh]

The camp that my troop usually goes to for summer camp has a science building' date=' and a few other buildings that go beyond Stosh's list. But it is not really up to any of us to decide what facilities "should be" at someone else's camp. If you want to go to a camp with two buildings, go to a camp with two buildings. Others may wish to go to a different camp.[/quote']

 

Exactly. There are those boys who wish to go to MB summer school and have all the amenities and then there are a few of the old fogies that spend time with their boys wandering trails, paddling canoes and digging out rain gear as needed.

 

And when all is said and done, the "building" the boys said was the best was the Eagle's Nest tree house at the camp they just attended. That's where they did a couple of their MB's.

 

What I find surprising at least around here is the big building camps seem to be losing campers year after year and the primitive camps seem to be slowly growing.

 

When I asked about this week at the camp I was just at, they said they had 700+ scouts registered for the week. I found that quite surprising for a primitive camp with 15 campsites.

[TAHAWK]

The camp in whitch I staffed as a kid was in the mountains in So. Cal. We had constant fire bans and, as noted, even stove bans. By 1959, patrol cooking was about dead for summer camp, but pretty much all the units were camping every month of the year, so lots of cooking (and fire-building) experince.

 

Old timers told me about non-troop summer camping with "site counselors" and "cabin counselors." I thought that sounded odd, like going to a Jamboree other than in your troop. Oh well.

 

Our council had two summer camp reservations at one time. The "primitive" one (cold showers; no dining hall; no indoor class spaces) consistently filled better as a % than the camp with all the buildings. In some weeks, it had more campers in ten sites than the "big" camp with thirty. So they sold the primitive camp. The campers did not switch to the "big" camp. They went elsewhere. The SE at the time said he "did not understand." Too bad that was not a moment of insight instead of merely being true.

 

Where did the primitive camp keep the papers and other things that needed to be dry? In wanigans or plastic tubs.

[scoutergipper]

Wow! - 700 campers in 15 sites? That's almost 50 Scouts in each site! That is impressive. We don't have a single Summer Camp in our Council with even one campsite that would hold that many Scouts.

[Stosh]

Wow! - 700 campers in 15 sites? That's almost 50 Scouts in each site! That is impressive. We don't have a single Summer Camp in our Council with even one campsite that would hold that many Scouts.

 

The site my 4 boys and two adults had this summer could easily accommodate 6-7 patrols + 1 adult patrol and all be at least 300' apart. We had our choice of meadow, woods, and deep woods for our tent sites. Extra porta-johns were brought in as we were leaving and I'm thinking that the site could have gone 150 boys easily if one were to throw out the 300' rule. Let's just say, the meadow alone was big enough to just about accommodate a football field. The next site over, separated by a thick barrier of trees could probably accommodate 2/3's of our site, but maybe not because it wasn't as flat.

 

Stosh

[Sidney Porter]

 

 

 

When I asked about this week at the camp I was just at, they said they had 700+ scouts registered for the week. I found that quite surprising for a primitive camp with 15 campsites.

 

That is close to 50 scouts at each campsite. That doesn't sound that enjoyable to me you are right up on each other.

[Sidney Porter]

Maybe I am missing something but are the dining halls open all year round? I assumed that it was just for the summer camps. So one week a year they eat in the hall. assuming they are camping at least once a month that leaves a lot of patrol cooking.