02/14/2025
The following has been published on the New Hampshire Heritage Museum Trail website https://nhmuseumtrail.org/25-stories-for-250-years/ and on various social media platforms, as part of NHHMT's "25 stories for 250 years" campaign.
AS SCOUTING AMERICA celebrates 115 years this month, and the New Hampshire Council reaches 105 years, we anticipate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 2026:
SCOUTING PITCHES CAMP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
by Joe Biedrzycki
In 1907, Lord Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell adapted his military training program as “a game with a purpose”. The program was discovered by Chicago Publisher William D. Boyce, after getting lost in the London fog and being helped by an “Unknown Scout”. Boyce brought the program idea back to America, and The Boy Scouts of America was founded in 1910.
The Scouting movement hiked into the Granite State and pitched camp in 1912, but a rather unorganized initial effort made it an up-hill climb. As Scouting grew in popularity, three makeshift councils formed in Dover, Claremont, and Portsmouth. The council added a Scout Executive to its staff in 1919. On January 9, 1920, the Manchester Council was granted an official charter with the Boy Scouts of America. It became Daniel Webster Council in 1929.
In its heyday, Daniel Webster Council comprised nearly 18,000 youth, and 5,000 adult volunteers registered with the BSA. Today an active, thriving program exists statewide within Scouting America. Daniel Webster Council operates both Hidden Valley Scout Reservation in Gilmanton Iron Works, and Camp Carpenter in Manchester. It now comprises boys and girls age five through twenty-one, in Cub Scout Packs, Scouts BSA Troops, Exploring Posts, Venturing Crews and Sea Scout Ships.
In 2026, during America’s 250th Anniversary, New Hampshire Scouts will celebrate 105 years of growing youth into men and women of character and achievement.
