Part One: Maumee Reservation History
The Evolution of Maumee Reservation
The Boy Scout Camping Facility
Hoosier Trails Council, B.S.A
1960 to 1972
By: Timothy W. Rose, Sr.
Boy Scout Camps just don't happen, and they haven't always "just been there!" Most camps have evolved over a period of time as a result of an experienced need for same. After all, three-fourths of the word Scouting is “OUTING,” and without the outdoors experience, seventy-five percent of the total Scouting experience is lost.
Design Draft of the Maumee Scout Reservation Sign
The creation of an outstanding Scout Camp requires untold numbers of volunteers spending thousands of hours and a like number of dollars and miles just to make it happen for our youth. The Maumee Scout Reservation fits comfortably into those parameters. As you will see in this treatise, a lot of earnest effort, diligent research, careful financing, even a little chicanery, and certainly a mountain of good fortune coupled with a bit of chance helped to make it happen.
Prior to the acquisition of the Bloomington City-owned Leonard Springs land for use as a Boy Scout facility, long-term and weekend camping was hit or miss situation; utilizing any seemingly suitable piece of land that might be expected to serve that purpose. It is reported that many sites in the eight county White River Council area, as well as the Crane Naval Depot, were utilized and enjoyed, and even at this writing nostalgic reports come from the few remaining adults who participated in those camping expeditions in their youth.
Near the end of World War II, members of the Executive Board of the Council were successful in negotiating with the Bloomington City officials for a ninety-nine-year lease at one dollar per year for the 40 acres, more or less, which was a portion of the old abandoned city waterworks area west of Bloomington called Leonard Springs. Within its border was in impounded lake of about one acre, which was maintained basically from what was known as "wet weather springs" from the underground limestone and area run off. Very soon thereafter the Council was able to purchase from a local family a 22 plus acres of land West of and adjacent to the proposed camp. This was familiarly referred to by the Scouts as "The Pines", and was a favorite campsite for who reserved it early enough to call it theirs.
That camp, which soon earned the name “Wapehani” after a presumed local Native American tribe, acquired suitable buildings and improvements that served the Council very well for the next fifteen or more years until creeping urbanization began to conflict with the serenity that was expected of a rustic setting. Residential developments on the West, followed by the construction of a multiple apartment complex, called “Oakdale Square,” to the North soon brought to the attention of Scout leaders the need for another facility for camping purposes. It was most difficult to expect young Scouts to turn into their bedrolls and get quiet at a reasonable hour when the blaring of neighboring radios and television sets went on well into the late hours of the night. Then malicious mischief and vandalism crossed the camp boundaries from the north, making up-keep and maintenance a costly part of a rather limited budget.
In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Executive Board members and interested Scouters, encouraged by the Council Camping Committee, began a meaningful vigilance for a more suitable campsite that might relieve the problem inherent with one so close to a growing city. Over the next several years Board members and the Long-Range Camp Development Committee looked at a good many sites and travelled many miles hoping to find a site capable of being developed to serve the Council's needs. Through this effort several parameters developed which guided the search; namely, (1) the site must be able to serve our camping needs for many years to come, (2) it must be located so that residential encroachment would be negligible, and it must be capable of developing a sizable body of water which certainly must be situated free of unwanted contamination from undesired run-off water which we could not control.
Sites which were viewed extensively and with the above criteria in mind are listed only in chronological order and not with any degree of interest on the part of the Council. The intent of the listing is to demonstrate the extent to which the search was conducted.
June 1965: 150 acres, Peabody Coal Company
August 1965: 63 acres, Sherwood Templeton Coal Company
September 1966:
Carter's Creek Structure site
Orange County Lost River water shed area
November 1966: Two different sites at Monroe Reservoir area
January 1967: Hunter's Creek area
March 1968: Sites in Brown County and West Jackson County
June 1968:
Site near Salt Creek in Jackson County
Gossard property in N.E. Morgan County
October 1968: 675 acres in Orange County
November 1968: 600 acres in Greene County
January 1969: Site in Brown County
February 1969: 400 acres in Greene County
June 1969: 420 acres in Greene County
August 1969: 325 acres in Jackson County
About the Author
Timothy Winton Rose Sr.
Timothy Winton Rose Sr. was a life-long Scouter and served as Council Commissioner and past council President. He was a member of the Long Range Camp Committee, the team dedicated to finding and establishing Maumee Scout Reservation, “one of the finest BoyScout camping facilities in the Middle West…”
Mr. Rose composed “The Evolution of Maumee Reservation” as a loving remembrance in celebration of Maumee’s 25th Anniversary. Mr. Rose passed away on September 12, 2010 at the age of 93.