Owasippe Scout Reservation

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Owasippe Scout Reservation (OSR), located in Twin Lake, Michigan, is the resident camp operated by the Chicago Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. It began in 1911 as Camp White on 40 acres of land on Crystal Lake donated by the White Lake Chamber of Commerce, and bills itself at the United States' longest continuously operating Boy Scout camp. At its peak of use the reservation covered 11,000 acres and served over 10,000 Scouts per summer, but the overall decline in Scouting nationwide has seen yearly attendance fall to approximately 3,800 campers. Previous property consolidations have left the camp at 4,800 acres in size, and the council is now attempting to sell the camp but with stiff resistance from the local community, Scout volunteer leaders, and staff alumni.

Owasippe is also home to the E. Urner Goodman Scout Museum, housed in the old Blue Lake Township hall at the reservation's administration center.

Contents

1 Location
2 Section camps
3 Wildlife
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Location

Owasippe Scout Reservation lies within the boundaries of Manistee National Forest in West-Central Michigan, and the Northeast border of the camp is formed in part by the White River. The watershed of Cleveland Creek, a tributary of the White River, with its many springs and streams is completely surrounded by the reservation's boundaries, and is purported to be the only watershed in the Midwest where this occurs.

Owasippe shares Big Blue Lake with YMCA Camp Pendalouan. The reservation's eastern border is shared, in part, with Gerald R. Ford Council's Gerber Scout Camps, and to the south is Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.

A theme park, Michigan's Adventure, is also nearby.

Section camps

For most of its history, Owasippe has been further subdivided into smaller, semi-autonomous section camps. While each section camp offers the standard summer camp program, differences in location, food preparation, and swimming accommodations contribute to the unique atmosphere of each camp. Each section camp has its own cheer and at least one camp song. Each section camp has multiple program areas such as handicraft, aquatics, nature, scoutcraft, shooting sports, and adventure-patrol (first-year campers)...all supported by a campstaff of roughly 30 personnel.

Currently, Camps Blackhawk and Wolverine operate as Boy Scout camps during the summer with about 25 campsites in each of these subcamps. Camp Carlen, formerly Camp Sauger Lake, hosts a Venture Base, while Reneker Family Camp offers programs for the families of Scout leaders while that related troop is bivouacked in camp. Camp Robert Crown is used as a base for the council's high adventure trek program, "The Manistee Quest", but is mostly mothballed. An "outpost program" is available to older campers offering unique program opportunities featuring the Diamond-O Ranch and Wrangler Outpost, Charles Nagel COPE Course Ropes Course and Christopher Hill Climbing Wall, Photography Outpost, Astronomy Outpost, J Stephen Fossett Sailing Base, and a Fishing Outpost.

The Manistee Quest is a guided off-reservation backpack and/or canoe trek program utilizing a 100-mile section of the North Country Trail that traverses the Manistee National Forest and intersecting navigable rivers. Crews of no more than 10 older Scouts and adult leaders go on a week-long excursion fully equipped with all provisions for that time frame on a wilderness route planned and organized by their youth leadership.

Camp Hiawatha Beach, while technically not a section camp, is a lone troop camp offered for those units who wish to run their own summer camp experience.

Camps which were sold off or otherwise closed include Camps Stuart, West, and Beard around Crystal Lake (sometimes referred to as Owasippe Lake); Camp Bel-Nap, and Camp Bass Lake (lone troop). Camps Wolverine North and South were combined into the current Camp Wolverine in the 1980s, and Camp Wilderness was incorporated into the current Camp Blackhawk when the latter camp was moved.

Wildlife

Species of note within Owasippe include the Karner Blue butterfly, Bald Eagle, Eastern Box Turtle, Blandings Turtle, and Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake. In 2002, the Nature Conservancy organized a Bioblitz to catalog the species of flora and fauna on the Reservation, and later produced a report listing the various species that were found. Owasippe is known to be one of the last locations in Michigan which hosts the Oak Savanna, a rare ecosystem, and the Coastal Plain Marsh which hosts unique flower and fauna dependent on acidic soils.

References

["America's Oldest Boy Scout Camps"] by David L. Eby

External links